Student Given Detention For Using Firefox [UPDATED]

An anonymous reader writes "Several sites are reporting that a student has been given detention for using Firefox to do his classwork. No, really. The student was in class, working on an assignment that necessitated using a browser. The teacher instructed him to stop using Firefox and to do his classwork, to which the student responded that he was doing his classwork using a 'better' browser (it is unclear whether the computer was the student's own computer or not). The clueless teacher (who called the rogue program 'Firefox.exe') ordered him to detention." Update: 12/17 20:09 by SM One of the school officials was nice enough to contact us and let us know this is a hoax. If you are planning on calling the school please refrain from doing so, I'm sure they have had enough excitement for one day.

Comments

UPDATE! Cory Doctorow just reported...

[Spy der Mann]

From boing boing's blog entry:

I just spoke to the principal of the high-school -- nice enough fellow. According to him:
* The kid altered the document after scanning it
* The kid was punished for mouthing off to the teacher, not for using Firefox
* The kid had been asked to work in Word on a resume (the assignment) and kept looking at the Web instead (and this was a recurring problem)
* The kid has admitted this and will be posting a followup/correction/retraction today

It appears that the student wasn't JUST using "a better browser". He was browsing OTHER STUFF on the web. Too bad.

Re:OSS is evil.

[gt_mattex]

This entire story is possibly based on erroneous information.

http://www.bigspring.k12.pa.us/news.php?action=view_article&article_id=2130