Battery Life and Blocked Programs

My school computer doesn't have a very good battery life. I have looked it up to try to figure out why and troubleshoot it, and I've found many good solutions. For example, you can check what is causing problems with your battery through the program Activity Monitor. Actually, no, you can't. Activity Monitor is blocked on our school computers. This resulted in one burning question: why is it blocked?

To find my answer, I interviewed Sam Thompson, the GenYes teacher and technology specialist at Treasure Mountain. Mr. Thompson said, “There are only so many programs that they can maintain at a successful level [...].” However, there is literally no way that Activity Monitor can be used in a harmful or inappropriate way, so why is it blocked?

I made a second interview in hopes of a more helpful answer, and according to Joe Stout, “As for Activity Monitor and Chess, we are asked to keep apps that are not needed in any of your classes blocked as it takes kids off task.” How would Activity Monitor take people off task? It doesn’t make sense, as all you can use it for is to check what programs are using the most battery.

His quote also brings up the second issue: the Chess application, which is also blocked. Why is Chess blocked if the website “chess.com” isn't? Chess.com does exactly the same thing as the chess program, but with the added issue that you're able to play and chat with people across the world. This adds more potential for harmful and distracting use than the Chess app! Even now, this doesn't make any sense.

Treasure Mountain needs to change their policy on computers in some ways. If they are going to unblock things like “chess.com,” which is far more distracting than the application Chess... but still not unblock Chess, the system obviously needs amendment.