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Internet Pranks in Schools
Ferante125 writes "An interesting article about online pranks by students and teachers' responses to them. There are some interesting stats that sounded a little hard to believe. My immature side finds it funny and my more mature side is interested in the legal aspects." For the most part it seems like this article thinks pranks are basically just name calling and flaming on websites.
Hmm, interesting article. The definition of "prank" isn't just name calling and flaming. We have to re-define the term to include modern equivalent actions that corresponds to the term "prank". What is an acceptable on-line prank and what isn't?
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i taught for a couple of years as a volunteer teacher for C++ while with a company that was nice enough to give me time off to do this.
one student disliked me so much he hacked AOL's IM database to disable my IM account.
i had evidence it was him as well as people telling me he was bragging about it. at the end of the day i just tossed it up and said "hey he's still a kid making mistakes he'll learn" maybe not the best choice but presenting my evidence to superiors would have ended in blank stares.
My 8th-grade pranks involved exploiting a weakness in the regional school board's network and gaining admin access to the entire system, allowing me to make changes to things on a whim, and have access to every teacher's and administrator's e-mail accounts. My father, who was working as a programmer at the time, was simultaneously proud and miffed.
-Matthew Riley "TofuMatt" MacPherson
I have a website
Hell, teachers today have little authority on anything that happens on school grounds. My wife teaches elementary music, and even at that age it's a little less than Lord of the Flies because the teachers can do little about behavior and the kids know it.
What is there to do when the kids keep upping the ante and there's no recourse on the school ground? Hit 'em were it hurts. Maybe if parents have to pay for a lawyer for mommy's little bastard's behavior, some parents will start, you know, parenting...
I think this is very true. As a rule, the general 'trend' of knowledge and capability is increasing- we see the percentage of 25 year olds who have undergraduate degrees today is the same as the percentage of 25 year olds who had high school diplomas forty or fifty years ago.
But the maximum, the possibilities, have increased immensely- in 50 years, we've developed in every field, from metallurgy to medicine to computers in ways that would never have been dreamed possible seventy-five years ago.
And, as you posit, our transition to a knowledge-based economy has made it possible for those who aren't interested in self-development to essentially stagnate, comfortably, at an unusual lack of development, especially compared to those who DO focus on development and continue to advance.
The financial gap between the rich and the poor continues to increase; and yes, so does the knowledge gap.
Essentially, I think, you are starting to see a striation into class-like bands in our society- between those who want to develop and advance for advancement's sake and those who merely want to live their lives.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
I have met some exceptionally talented high schoolers. In school have the free time to really keep up on all the new tech and enjoy the legal protection of juvenile criminal sentences that allows them to explore that side of the net with less risk.
When I worked at IBM in Connecticut I met a core of about 8 high school students who had set up their high school computer lab and entire network by establishing close tie with a local college and then riding on the colleges internet connection. Three of these kids worked support at a local ISP as tech support, at least one was an open source developer, and the rest were mostly dabblers. But still they set up the entire computer lab and were more up to date on security than the security response team in IBM. They were the first to demonstrate to me how you could teardrop attack a competitor during a Quake match to lag them so you could get an easy kill. This was long before I heard of teardrop on the CERT mailing list.
I had some great discussions with these kids and they helped me on rebuild my laptop (it needed some custom drivers for Linux as Linux distros for laptops were pretty rare back then.) Two went to work at priceline straight out of high school (with salaries higher than mine if I recall correctly.)
Yet another example. One of the best programmers I met at MIT came into college knowing more about assembly programming than I knew when I left. He was the head printer driver developer for an American branch of a Japanese firm while in highshcool! He supplied me with free printers all through college as he would hand me the test prototype after he finished coding the driver. He would just sit down for a a weekend with a new device and code up a driver from the specs I still have no idea how he did this while doing a full coarse load. So don't imagine that age or education determines 1337ness of programming skills. They are potentially just as smart and creative as any adult, they just have less experience to make them well rounded. But if they focus on a single domain they can have a lot more breadth than you or I and as they have been learning more recently they will know all the latest techniques that us old timers will not yet have absorbed.
Children are not dumb. They are the same as adults. Some kids are truly brilliant, others could kill a brick in a padded room. I know at least one teenager whom is fully self sufficient: working a job, paying rent, paying her own way through college, cooking meals, cleaning, etc.
The self sufficient kids are almost always the ones I found to be intelligent and articulate beyond their years as they had no choice but to grow up. But on the other hand if the parent treated the kid like dumb pet that is almost always what they get. Luckily most kids grow out of that once they get out on their own.
I was a minor victim when I was about 7-8-9 and it wasn't ignored. Times have changed though, I remember when I was the victim the bully would be told to sit inside alone at playtime for a few days (or just to stand still next to the teacher outside), he didn't like it but he did it, and it helped. Would an eight year old do that now? I don't know, but it probably depends on the parents a lot. Also, the headteacher of my primary school (age 5-11) was really scary, no one wanted to be sent to see her. It was even scary to be sent to see her for an award. They probably don't make women like that any more.
We homeschool our 2 kids (currently 4th & 7th grade). We live a bit out of the way, and we just don't care for the wasted time and resources public education drains on everyone (us, the kids, etc.). We're in the middle of a family debate on whether to re-introduce them back. They want more social interaction, but that just means they want daily contact w/ kids their own age, not that they have any trouble socializing.
Our kids lack a bit of "street smarts", but they're pretty sharp. The are not finely tuned to pass standardized tests, but they have the ability to figure stuff out. Combined with the fact that we haven't had TV in 7 or so years, they are also a bit lacking in current pop culture references and almost totally lack the branded, consumerist mindset most kids (and adults) have today. Sure, I doubt my kids will be National Honor Society material, but I think that's a good thing.
Personally, my wife and I feel that for the vast majority of occupations, college is more of a liability than anything these days. Education has become such a boogeyman for gullible parents that it has become commoditized and commercialized to the point of loosing any meaning it once had. The cost (and potential debt) is outrageous, and it seems so few actually ever use their degree (for example, I once had a manager when I was waiting tables that had a chemistry degree -- WTF?!?). If my kids *want* to go down a career path that requires tons of education (academia, law, medicine, etc.), then they'll be motivated to find a way to get there. If not, then they'll start off in a slightly lower caste, but with substantially less baggage than their college-educated, debt-laden, Prozac-popping peers.
Sure, home-schooled kids *may* be slightly less equipped to handle the "real, big bad world" than their hardened, systemically-programmed public education counterparts. However, we believe that it will be far easier for our kids to catch up on any good things they missed out on in school once they are adults than it will be for them to shed the stupid habits and conformity they would have gained there.
Method of processing duck feet
The difficulty i really feel is exemplified by one time last week when the prof raised his hand and asked "How many of you, if you were to pay the same tuition and receive the same degree, would spend your years on a beach in Hawaii instead?"
And everybody save two raised their hands.
I of course, may have refused to raise my hand solely because I dislike beaches. But it showed what I thought was a disturbing endemic in the school population. Students don't come to learn. They don't care about learning. It doesn't interest them and they get little, if anything out of it will stick with them in later life. The number of students who had to learn calculus in senior year and then can't recall it two years later proves that.
Maybe that's not exactly what you mean. But I feel disillusioned that these... people... show no interest in being intelligent. They show no interest in being knowledgeable. Current events and international affairs, if anything, are a taboo subject- even among international relations and political science majors!
What use, then, in the grand scheme of things, is an ability, (the advantage of long amounts of computer use) if they don't use it in a productive way? What use is a BMW if it sits in my garage day after day?
It is perhaps even more frightening that they may have this talent and refuse to use it productively. Ignorance, at least, can be remedied. Stupidity is a much more tricky problem.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance