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

The Slashdot Effect

[rice_burners_suck]

As they say in the article, the school's phone number is 717-776-2434. Let's teach this school a thing or two about the /. effect!

No surprise

[Vinegar Joe]

The teaching "profession" isn't known for attracting the best or the brightest.....

Re:Here's his teacher

[sykopomp]

You, sir, are an absolute ass. Get yourself back to *chan, where your kind belong. And never, ever come back.

And who claimed that it was?

[khasim]

Blow it out your ass. Just because someone is in charge, in this case a teacher in charge of the classroom, doesn't mean that the school is fascist.

And who said that it did? No one?

Guess that means that you've just attacked a "straw man" of your own devising. Good for you!

Should the students be allowed to install and run anything they want on school computers?

Well it seems that he WAS allowed to. Since he managed to do it. Now it might have been against POLICY.

Can you do that at YOUR job?

Why do you care? That is a job. If you do not agree with the policies where you work, you can find a different job which has policies that you do agree with.

School doesn't have the same options.

The teacher failed to act in a manner consistent with a responsible, mature adult. That's it.

Uh, no. I expect Authority to be... well, in charge.

One day you may learn that being "in charge" is NOT the same as ordering people around.

Re:authority figure is a moron

[Holy69]

You sound like the classic case of a proletariat. Just do what everyone tells you, even if it is stupid, and you know it's wrong. It's people like you who allow stupid stuff like this to continue to happen, and probably more worse situations then this to happen as well. Kodos to the kid who stands up to his teacher, but its apparent that the average person can't even stand up for himself or herself when he or she knows that the other person is wrong and unjust.

Re:Despite this being a hoax...

[Karem Lore]

the student was punished for failing to follow instructions, not for using Firefox

And you get this information from where exactly, or are you reading between the lines of a headteacher?

Whether the student was right or not about Firefox being a "better" browser, it appears that there were numerous requests to stop using it, period. So? Oh, sorry, you're one of the ones that doesn't allow "thinking" and using initiative! You must be from the thought crime unit, the one where any thought outside of that which is fed to you is reprimanded!

Maybe the school had an IT policy in place that prohibits the use of any other browsers then the one provided. This is an assumption, and is why our kids are so indoctrinated in a capitalistic approach on life (extreme capitalism = facism).

all we do know is the student was being an ass. Wow, justice the military/red way. Guantanamo bay rubbed off on you? Where exactly did you pull that fact from, or just siding with the "authority figure"?

He was instructed to do something and ignored those instructions. WOW! now I REALLY want to know how you reached this completely unconnected conclusion, please enlighten.

At the end of the day, neither you nor I know what happened, and discussing this on a site like slashdot, well, I obviously don't have anything better to do at the moment ;) If the kid was being an arse, good on the school. If the school was being an arse by not allowing the student to express their own ideas and thought while still providing the required work results then the school is totalitarian. Either way, I don't speculate on what happened.

Karem