Why We Need To Teach Hacking In High School

An anonymous reader writes "Following one of the best descriptions ever of a hacker I've ever seen, Pete Herzog, creator of the 'security testing' (professional hacking) manual OSSTMM outlines compelling reasons why the traits of the hacker should be taught in school to make better students and better people. It starts out with 'Whatever you may have heard about hackers, the truth is they do something really, really well: discover.' and it covers open education, teaching kids to think for themselves, and promoting hacking as a tool for progress." A good read, despite confusing hacker and hacker a bit. I remember getting to set up Debian on a scrap machine in high school, only to have county IT kill the project because of the horrible danger experimentation could have proven to the network...

Comments

I don't think so

[TheRealMindChild]

The school admins already have a hard enough time dealing with kids destroying things, both logically and physically. Now you expect them to be on the level enough to be able to stave away actually taught hackers? How much are you willing to pay for this little experiment (both in the admins pay, and the cost of cleaning up the disasters)?

Re:I don't think so

[BobMcD]

This, because, as alluded to in TFS, it always creates more work for them. Observe:

I remember getting to set up Debian on a scrap machine in high school, only to have county IT kill the project because of the horrible danger experimentation could have proven to the network...

I'm here to tell you that an uncontrolled machine ran by amateurs is a prime example of 'danger to the network'. I still recall the day the new guy named his Ubuntu box the same thing as our domain suffix. Only because I knew what was supposed to be on the network and what wasn't was I able to get things back up and running again. The same thing can happen with a simple IP address conflict.

In short, to do this with any educational value, IT would have to segregate the network to prevent accidental student damage. From what I know of most educational IT, they lack the time, money, and (sorry to say) skills/training to do this for their production networks, let alone standing up test labs for hackers to play with.

Maybe in an IT-centric school, sure. But primary education? Puhlease.

A supportive high school environment helps a lot

[langelgjm]

I went to a private high school. It was small and didn't have many resources. Still, I was fortunate to have a very supportive environment for my exploration and learning related to computing.

The teacher who taught programming had actually managed IT/network stuff in Micronesia, so she was not in the habit of throwing old tech out. We received a lot of donated equipment from various businesses, and she saved most of it in a storage room. When she found out how interested I was in technology, she basically gave me the run of the place - allowed me to take home equipment to play with, just hang out in there during lunch and after school, put together new machines for the lab, etc. This was where I first learned about other architectures - got my hands on an old DEC Alpha.

When she saw that I had already self-taught some programming, she allowed me to skip directly to an advanced programming course, and teach myself as an independent study.

Later, she let me set up an NT server with roving profiles and network home directories for the lab, so that students in the general office suite classes could save their work on the network, keep it backed up, and their teacher would have centralized access to it. Prior to this, they were all using floppy disks.

Without that environment I'd still have been interested and involved with tech, but it sure made it easier and more interesting, and I learned a lot. I suspect that many teachers might not have been willing to allow a student so much freedom, or that policies might have forbidden it.

You do know that they're struggling with algebra..

[Karmashock]

... right? We really need to stop treating all high school students as equals because it hurts all of them.

The students that are having a hard time mastering literacy need a lot of remedial help. The ones that are doing very well need access to accelerated programs and additional subjects.

Do NOT group these kids together. You will make sure the kids that are behind learn NOTHING and the kids that are ahead will achieve less.

Re:Yes another thing to teach highschool students

[nucrash]

I think the biggest thing is that we need to focus on how to make the students learn rather than trying to initiate them into a bunch of subjects they may or may not be interested in. I know students who will never love math, English, history, or science, but if we can pique their curiosity in such a way that they begin to dig for information outside of school, then we have done more for a student than shoving a curriculum down their throat ever will. This is fundamentally what good teachers are for. They take an existing curriculum and try to drive the student to find information out rather than provide the students with answers to questions on a test.

Hacking is a great skill to have. Is it a life skill? Not really. Having the desire to hack is far more important because the students will seek the knowledge.

Re:Yes another thing to teach highschool students

[Soulskill]

It's not the particular language that's important -- once you get beyond the basic syntax of a language, it's really about analyzing a problem and being able to break it down into logically ordered steps, and then manipulating algorithms to do what you want. Those skills are very broadly applicable, and useful whatever a kid's profession ends up being.