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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.
I think we can all safely jump to conclusions here and make some truly insane comments - GO!
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Our schools are supposed to teach discipline, which most people think means following the rules. As Stephen Colbert says, if the rules were logical then they wouldn't be learning respect for the rules, they'd be learning logic.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Haha, reminds me of how I got yelled at by an irate "computer-science" teacher ages ago, for breaking a monitor (ie. turning it off with the big red power button on the front)
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Headline is a bit sensationalist.
this is slashdot, we don't use logic here. for that you need to go to.... um... not the internet!
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
I work at a school district in IT, and I can assure you that some (too many) teachers can barely teach, let alone manage to run a classroom with computers.
I would love to require all teachers who want to use computers have to attend a class on computers in the classroom by someone like me who can explain the technology and what it can do (and not do) in the classroom.
However, I can equally assure you that the Teacher's Union is so high on itself that it wouldn't allow having a non-teacher teaching anything, let alone other teachers. There is this underlying current of elitism in many teachers.
Suffice it to say, I doubt that 85% of the teachers using computers in the classroom know anything more than "Click the Start Menu" type instruction, and if it isn't Microsoft ________ it isn't used. Period. Firefox isn't Microsoft, so it isn't used, and teachers don't know about it.
I don't know if I should blame the teachers or not. However, this teacher was running the classroom properly. The student had no right to change the instruction of the teacher (even if the student was correct). I know that managing a classroom of people is hard enough without having some rogue student thinking they know better. Even if Firefox is a better browser (it is), that doesn't give the student the right to vary from the instruction (use IE).
One last thing, the last thing I want on computers I manage is students downloading and installing whatever programs they think they want onto computers. If they want to use a program they need to request it through the proper channels. If I caught a student installing software on a computer without permission, I'd recommend they be expelled, regardless of what they were installing. Its not their computer.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
his is an apology for authoritarianism - assuming innocence on the part of authority, and granting benefits of doubt to their actions while also itemising possible hypothitical infractions by the accused.
Uh, no. I expect Authority to be... well, in charge. Imagine that. Should the students be allowed to install and run anything they want on school computers? Can you do that at YOUR job?
That is how fascism is apologised.
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.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
It appears that the student wasn't JUST using "a better browser". He was browsing OTHER STUFF on the web. Too bad.
If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.
Exactly, schools aren't there to teach creativity, they're supposed to teach conformity and acceptance. And I damn sure want to keep it that way because I'm creative, I like my job security, and I need schools to churn out people to fix my plumbing so I don't have to crawl around under my house. I would hope my fellow /.ers would feel the same.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
http://www.bigspring.k12.pa.us/news.php?action=view_article&article_id=2130
"No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture." - Learned Hand
Yes, incredible as it may seem, this has happened to me.
Let me repeat that:
this HAS happened to me.
Schools (K-12 at least) seem to be under the impression that students should be locked down hard from the Internet - a policy I may not agree with, but see good reason for. However, this attitude has gotten me into trouble a number of times.
For instance, one day we had some assignment to look something or another up on the Internet. Since I had my laptop there, I decided that I would use it instead (it has a Dvorak keyboard, which I like better than QWERTY). I pulled out my laptop, hooked it up to an unused RJ45 jack with a cat5e cable that I had brought from home, and did the assignment. At the end of the hour, as we were all packing up, our "sysadmin" (I use the term loosely, as I could do a better job than him while in a coma) walked in and saw my laptop. He walked over, asked my name, and then asked me to try to access a blocked webpage (myspace, if I remember correctly). I typed in the URL, and lo and behold the site came up. The sysadmin looked puzzled, thanked me, and walked away, polite as can be. The next day I found my computer account suspended and a fresh new detention slip waiting for me for circumventing school security, even though I had never done so until he asked me to visit the blocked website.
The first detention was something that I could see a faint glimmer of rationality in, but the second one I got took the cake. This one occurred a few days later, while my computer account was still suspended. I was in the lab again, using the teacher's account (we needed the internet again, and my laptop had suddenly and mysteriously been banned from connecting to the internet at school) when the sysadmin walked into the room and saw me on the computer. He talked to me teacher for a while, and I could see her trying to explain why I needed her account and his insistence that I was breaking every school rule known. Eventually, he walked over to me and asked whose account I was on, etc. and told me to get off immediately. I complied, but before he walked away I asked why my laptop could no longer connect to the network. I asked as polite as you please, no anger in my voice, no threatening actions, etc. He simply looked at me with an odd expression on his face for a few seconds and then walked off. Next day I get a slip with not one, not two, not three, but FOUR detentions for "using another person's account" and for "insubordination."
All this hyperbole brings me back to my initial point: at a different point in time, I got a detention for using a version of portable firefox from my thumbdrive.