Peter Blaise says: You're missing the point. These analogies are off the mark. The kids are just trying to use computers as computers. Leave them be. Watch them. Learn from them. Why is everyone so afraid of kids doing their own exploring and self-educating? Oh, because it's against the monopoly of the schools telling them the ONLY way to think, otherwise society will slide down a sink hole. Rubbish. These kids ARE society just as you and I are. Welcome them and cherish them and participate with them. Too hard? Too expensive? Then go do something else and let others help.
Peter Blaise says: Great points clearly explained, SillySlashdotName. What you describe is probably a supportive reason why the schools don't even try to offer the students, their customers, equivalent consideration in their contracts Hey, it's the parents who pay, mostly, and the parents dump the kids off because the parents don't want to live up the responsibility to educating their own children. So they subcontract. The parents pay. The admins and teachers get paid. The more services they offer the students, then less pay they get to keep. It makes sense to me to compromise on the services rendered in order to maximize their net receipts. Maybe we all should start a school, and tell the parents that their kid failed or was "bad" and that's why we're denying them services - and no, you can't have your money back! =8^o
Peter Blaise says: Oh yes, I see we definitely disagree, EmagGeek. I'm not sure of your background, but I come from 30 years of successful customer service - which is my reaction to getting sh*tty so-called customer service from the venerable educational institutions, no, from the PEOPLE at those institutions, when I was in school. In MY life, if I don't please the customer, I don't get paid. Period. The schools, however, what it both ways - they want the student's money, but they don't see the students as their customers to be served in exchange for that money. According to any judge, that lack of providing services nullifies the so-called contract right there!
Schools don't see themselves as servants to their customers - their students. While I appreciate the possibility of competition, that students can choose to go elsewhere, the truth is that no school considers their customers, their students, as equivalent in any contract. I'm grateful to the few judges who toss out such non-negotiated contracts and asses the case before them on it's merits sans the non-negotiated fine print in the contract, and treat the parties as equals at least before the law. But, the students have to take the school to court to get the chance to be treated as equals in the deal. Too bad the schools put up such resistance to just providing appropriate customer service in the first place!.
EmagGeek, your litany seems well thought out and logical but it is pure speculation and isn't really build on any core references or values I can identify (such as "customer service in exchange for payment"). Given that, such ill-willed (scared? overworked? underpaid? undereducated!?!) administrators and teachers take those general policies you espouse as if they were facts, interpreted only THEIR way of course, and then inflict them on the students. Shame on them. They need therapy, not students to kick around to try to make themselves feel better.
We're dealing with kids here. Kids who are way more energetic than the school administrators and teachers, apparently. Your proposed solution: dampen the kids so the admins and teachers feel less pain and stress. Ouch! Alternatively, I suggest that the admins and teachers get out of the way and let the students excel, and make way for a new generation of admins and teachers who DO want to celebrate and support their customers, the students. What's the school's reason for being, anyway? If the admins and teachers in the school can't figure out how to serve their customers, their students, then it's NOT the students who should go elsewhere, it's the admins and teachers who should vacate the premises instead of hanging on to it as if the school were there for them alone! It's not. Schools belong to the customers, the students. Any other guiding principle has no chance of being... even economically viable. Hey, let's start a business where customer service is NOT the method to success... show me one!;-)
Ahh well, EmagGeek, I'm sure you and others have confidence that something is being served by the admins acting the way they did in this case, and you see treating the students that way as appropriate and see no problem with it. I morn the loss of the opportunity to really get connected with these obviously excited students, and not only learn from them, but also set an example of behavior we'd like them to emulate. The only example set for them is how to win and beat the money out of unwilling customers while providing poor customer service, and hide it all behind the supposed higher morality of baseless fine print in a non-negotiated contract! For shame!
And another thing: The subject line [Re:Crime is the fault of the criminals] is such a simple and confused title - who wrote it? "The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple." (originally attributed to many people). The problem is in the supposed "authority" to say what a crime is! Without a negotiated contract with equivalent cons
You think the students should be held actionable to a contract, and I believe they were not empowered with equivalent consideration in the negotiating of that contract. That is why I believe students should be accompanied with a lawyer when at school to help them get appropriate services from the school, services the schools try to deny at every opportunity - that b*st*rds. Obviously, we here in this discussion are manifesting products of our experiences. I feel that schools took our money and then refused to provide appropriate services, and your experience differs. So, we disagree.
What do people do when they disagree? If they can't work it our with each other, they go to court. Each submits themselves to the authority of the court. It sounds as if the school thinks they are above the courts - a sad but, I find, typical presumption of such authoritarian enterprises. I see it this way: (a) the school is not willing to settle reasonably with the students, one on one, that is, renegotiate their individual service contract with equivalent consideration of the student's interests (as defined by the students) and (b) the school is not willing to enter a courtroom and sit across from the students as equals before a judge.
Now, who's being antisocial here? I believe it's the schools who set themselves above all else and inflict un-negotiatable and unreasonable edicts on their paying customers. Shame on them, especially when we consider that the schools are here to provide customer service and assist in the student's successful socialization. Throwing them out of school is de facto admission that the schools are unable to live up their customer service contract to support the students.
Analogy: EmagGeek, if YOU bought a car and used it AS A CAR and were not only denied warranty service support but also were denied further use of the car, you'd be pissed. If the car dealer said, "read the fine print, you're not supposed to drive in certain neighborhoods or during certain hours" or other such constraints that have NOTHING TO DO WITH A CAR BEING A CAR, you'd probably NOT say, "Oh, well then, I'm happy with paying for the car and then not getting services and getting it repossessed. Oh, yes, now that I read your unreasonable constraints, I'm very happy to have paid you for services that you now deny me because I admit - it was all my fault." Ludicrous.
We now get down to disagreeing about the fine print. What is it that the school wants to prohibit the students from doing? That is also what I find ludicrous, and I see the school saying "welcome to our educational support services, here's a computer, but don't use it as a computer" and then basing their restrictions on anything other than their promised customer service (proxy use "could"..., it's hard to maintain when each person does different things with it, and so on), and convicting the students of a "crime" even in situations where there was absolutely no damage or compromise to services available to anyone else, and the students use of the computer actually pursued the whole point of an education much better than the school was doing at the time!
So, EmagGeek, we merely disagree. Let's see if the schools and students take it to court (where I think a lot more rip-off-the-$tudent-attitude administrators and academics belong).
I leave a book on the table in the cafeteria and someone opens it and reads it. The crime is... ?
You're not thinking accurately about what's going on here. Just calling something a crime does not make it a crime. The real problem is the monopoly of education. If YOU got such customer-demeaning, customer-unfriendly service ANYWHERE, you'd leave the premises and never go back. The students have no alternative. I were a student, I'd want my lawyer with me every minute to demand appropriate services form this top-heavy monopoly that can't seem to understand who their customers are, let alone figure out how to service them. Customer service is hard, I know, especially when the students are so unruly. So? Fire the customer? Declare "being a customer" illegal? Declare "customer self-service activity" is illegal? Criminalize autodidacticism? (Look it up) Crazy!
Peter Blaise says: The school is for the students. Serve them. The "rules" should ONLY be in support of the student's interests, and not contrary to the students interests. Arbitrarily telling students to stay away from certain sites is against their interests. It's like telling catholic school kids, "Don't go into a mosque or temple." The rule protects the stupid teachers who don't know any better so they can say, "I told them not to go there." But why? The whole point of school it to help students develop their own scrutiny and skill. Why? Help the students ask and answer, "Why?" and stop penalizing them because they are way ahead of the teachers and curriculum, and way ahead of the school's technology curve. Get involved or get out. Either way, get out of the kid's way and let them excel!
Peter Blaise says: Yeah, blame the students because their teachers are stupider than they are! This is ludicrous, expecting smarter students to protect the idiots put in a position of responsibility "over" them. Note that the students are too young to be held to contract responsibilities, so blaming them for loosing millions of dollars of federal grants is just insane! Someone has everything backwards! Yes, its hard to be smarter than kids these days, and it's hard to take responsibility for a school and it's students. So? The school should grow or die, and stop blaming their customers for how hard their job is. "If it wasn't for these dang customers, this job would be a shinch." The students are customers. Serve them.
When you say you maintain the PCs using a boot CD, therefore, the students must also be able to boot from a CD, well then, I question your tech skills (and I question the [Shift] key on your keyboard, by the way - let's set an example for the kids by capitalizing the first letter of our sentences, okay?). You can password-protect and then set and reset the CMOS BIOS to boot from CD when you need it for maintenance, and to not boot from CD when you leave it for the students. If the PC cabinets are locked, then the students cannot easily reset the jumper that clears the CMOS (which would allow them to reset it and boot from CD without "permission").
Hi fellow SlashDotters,
Back to the question at hand, a few points come to my mind:
1: VOLUNTARY CIVILIZATION: We are a voluntary society, and this is an opportunity for everyone to learn how to voluntarily cooperate with others. I see the school completely missing an opportunity. Take the kids to see what happens in other venues to other people, like court. (Don't bring the kids as plaintiffs and defendants, but more as show and tell. And don't announce it to the court otherwise the Judge and Prosecutor may put on a show and send everyone on trial to jail just to look tough!) Let the kids see how a voluntary society works: "Trial is set for two weeks. You could go to jail after trial, so bring a lawyer." And defendants actually voluntarily show up in two weeks - amazing!
2: THEFT IS THEFT: If there were no computers in the world, and we were looking at, say, access to the library, and the kids found a back door open, and so they stole books, would the original poster say, "It's the school's responsibility to better lock the door, and so the kids are not responsible for stealing?" I think not. But, are we talking about getting into the library past security and just reading the books, or are we talking about stealing books, so to speak?
That said, I think no one is totally right or wrong here. I think each side has reasons supporting their behavior. I suggest that each has reasons to grow and change and trust each other more, reasons they are ignoring.
3: WE LEARN BY EXAMPLE (ONLY) and *THE SCHOOL* CREATED DAMAGED GOODS FIRST: I think we're talking about the kids trying to use the computers as computers. In opposition, the school is trying to offer what looks like computers but have been diminished to be more like dumb terminals. They want the students to be complicit in that compromise and play along.
I disagree with locking the computers so tight just because they might be used for bad stuff or just because they might be a challenge to maintain or just because someone wants to track their use. I recall the urban legend of the Department of Defense buying portable computers, then chaining them to people's desks! Doh!
The school is damaging the computers first by locking them so tight that they are no longer computers anymore, but are diminished to being mere dumb terminals. To some extent, it looks like anyone, especially kids (who are new to the experience of a voluntary society) might struggle with such a compromise, especially in comparison to their own home-computers where they can accomplish all sorts of neat and inventive stuff. I know, they can download and connect to all sorts of anti social and even illegal activities, also. But, an overly secured computer is more of a tease and a taunt in their faces than it is a useful tool. It sets an abusive example by the school, perhaps like offering books with some words or pages redacted out. They are saying, in effect, "We are more important than you. We decide that you all are not trustworthy. You can only have a compromised version of what we provide for ourselves."
Kids want to fully experience their power, and learn, and grow, and be seen, and be celebrated, and be welcomed and incorporated into the group. Hello? Isn't that the responsibility of what schools are supposed to be doing with all our property tax money
Slashdot Mirror
Peter Blaise says: You're missing the point. These analogies are off the mark. The kids are just trying to use computers as computers. Leave them be. Watch them. Learn from them. Why is everyone so afraid of kids doing their own exploring and self-educating? Oh, because it's against the monopoly of the schools telling them the ONLY way to think, otherwise society will slide down a sink hole. Rubbish. These kids ARE society just as you and I are. Welcome them and cherish them and participate with them. Too hard? Too expensive? Then go do something else and let others help.
Peter Blaise says: Great points clearly explained, SillySlashdotName. What you describe is probably a supportive reason why the schools don't even try to offer the students, their customers, equivalent consideration in their contracts Hey, it's the parents who pay, mostly, and the parents dump the kids off because the parents don't want to live up the responsibility to educating their own children. So they subcontract. The parents pay. The admins and teachers get paid. The more services they offer the students, then less pay they get to keep. It makes sense to me to compromise on the services rendered in order to maximize their net receipts. Maybe we all should start a school, and tell the parents that their kid failed or was "bad" and that's why we're denying them services - and no, you can't have your money back! =8^o
Peter Blaise says: Oh yes, I see we definitely disagree, EmagGeek. I'm not sure of your background, but I come from 30 years of successful customer service - which is my reaction to getting sh*tty so-called customer service from the venerable educational institutions, no, from the PEOPLE at those institutions, when I was in school. In MY life, if I don't please the customer, I don't get paid. Period. The schools, however, what it both ways - they want the student's money, but they don't see the students as their customers to be served in exchange for that money. According to any judge, that lack of providing services nullifies the so-called contract right there!
... even economically viable. Hey, let's start a business where customer service is NOT the method to success ... show me one! ;-)
Schools don't see themselves as servants to their customers - their students. While I appreciate the possibility of competition, that students can choose to go elsewhere, the truth is that no school considers their customers, their students, as equivalent in any contract. I'm grateful to the few judges who toss out such non-negotiated contracts and asses the case before them on it's merits sans the non-negotiated fine print in the contract, and treat the parties as equals at least before the law. But, the students have to take the school to court to get the chance to be treated as equals in the deal. Too bad the schools put up such resistance to just providing appropriate customer service in the first place!.
EmagGeek, your litany seems well thought out and logical but it is pure speculation and isn't really build on any core references or values I can identify (such as "customer service in exchange for payment"). Given that, such ill-willed (scared? overworked? underpaid? undereducated!?!) administrators and teachers take those general policies you espouse as if they were facts, interpreted only THEIR way of course, and then inflict them on the students. Shame on them. They need therapy, not students to kick around to try to make themselves feel better.
We're dealing with kids here. Kids who are way more energetic than the school administrators and teachers, apparently. Your proposed solution: dampen the kids so the admins and teachers feel less pain and stress. Ouch! Alternatively, I suggest that the admins and teachers get out of the way and let the students excel, and make way for a new generation of admins and teachers who DO want to celebrate and support their customers, the students. What's the school's reason for being, anyway? If the admins and teachers in the school can't figure out how to serve their customers, their students, then it's NOT the students who should go elsewhere, it's the admins and teachers who should vacate the premises instead of hanging on to it as if the school were there for them alone! It's not. Schools belong to the customers, the students. Any other guiding principle has no chance of being
Ahh well, EmagGeek, I'm sure you and others have confidence that something is being served by the admins acting the way they did in this case, and you see treating the students that way as appropriate and see no problem with it. I morn the loss of the opportunity to really get connected with these obviously excited students, and not only learn from them, but also set an example of behavior we'd like them to emulate. The only example set for them is how to win and beat the money out of unwilling customers while providing poor customer service, and hide it all behind the supposed higher morality of baseless fine print in a non-negotiated contract! For shame!
And another thing: The subject line [Re:Crime is the fault of the criminals] is such a simple and confused title - who wrote it? "The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple." (originally attributed to many people). The problem is in the supposed "authority" to say what a crime is! Without a negotiated contract with equivalent cons
Okay, so we disagree.
..., it's hard to maintain when each person does different things with it, and so on), and convicting the students of a "crime" even in situations where there was absolutely no damage or compromise to services available to anyone else, and the students use of the computer actually pursued the whole point of an education much better than the school was doing at the time!
You think the students should be held actionable to a contract, and I believe they were not empowered with equivalent consideration in the negotiating of that contract. That is why I believe students should be accompanied with a lawyer when at school to help them get appropriate services from the school, services the schools try to deny at every opportunity - that b*st*rds. Obviously, we here in this discussion are manifesting products of our experiences. I feel that schools took our money and then refused to provide appropriate services, and your experience differs. So, we disagree.
What do people do when they disagree? If they can't work it our with each other, they go to court. Each submits themselves to the authority of the court. It sounds as if the school thinks they are above the courts - a sad but, I find, typical presumption of such authoritarian enterprises. I see it this way: (a) the school is not willing to settle reasonably with the students, one on one, that is, renegotiate their individual service contract with equivalent consideration of the student's interests (as defined by the students) and (b) the school is not willing to enter a courtroom and sit across from the students as equals before a judge.
Now, who's being antisocial here? I believe it's the schools who set themselves above all else and inflict un-negotiatable and unreasonable edicts on their paying customers. Shame on them, especially when we consider that the schools are here to provide customer service and assist in the student's successful socialization. Throwing them out of school is de facto admission that the schools are unable to live up their customer service contract to support the students.
Analogy: EmagGeek, if YOU bought a car and used it AS A CAR and were not only denied warranty service support but also were denied further use of the car, you'd be pissed. If the car dealer said, "read the fine print, you're not supposed to drive in certain neighborhoods or during certain hours" or other such constraints that have NOTHING TO DO WITH A CAR BEING A CAR, you'd probably NOT say, "Oh, well then, I'm happy with paying for the car and then not getting services and getting it repossessed. Oh, yes, now that I read your unreasonable constraints, I'm very happy to have paid you for services that you now deny me because I admit - it was all my fault." Ludicrous.
We now get down to disagreeing about the fine print. What is it that the school wants to prohibit the students from doing? That is also what I find ludicrous, and I see the school saying "welcome to our educational support services, here's a computer, but don't use it as a computer" and then basing their restrictions on anything other than their promised customer service (proxy use "could"
So, EmagGeek, we merely disagree. Let's see if the schools and students take it to court (where I think a lot more rip-off-the-$tudent-attitude administrators and academics belong).
Peter Blaise says:
... ?
I leave a book on the table in the cafeteria and someone opens it and reads it. The crime is
You're not thinking accurately about what's going on here. Just calling something a crime does not make it a crime. The real problem is the monopoly of education. If YOU got such customer-demeaning, customer-unfriendly service ANYWHERE, you'd leave the premises and never go back. The students have no alternative. I were a student, I'd want my lawyer with me every minute to demand appropriate services form this top-heavy monopoly that can't seem to understand who their customers are, let alone figure out how to service them. Customer service is hard, I know, especially when the students are so unruly. So? Fire the customer? Declare "being a customer" illegal? Declare "customer self-service activity" is illegal? Criminalize autodidacticism? (Look it up) Crazy!
Peter Blaise says: The school is for the students. Serve them. The "rules" should ONLY be in support of the student's interests, and not contrary to the students interests. Arbitrarily telling students to stay away from certain sites is against their interests. It's like telling catholic school kids, "Don't go into a mosque or temple." The rule protects the stupid teachers who don't know any better so they can say, "I told them not to go there." But why? The whole point of school it to help students develop their own scrutiny and skill. Why? Help the students ask and answer, "Why?" and stop penalizing them because they are way ahead of the teachers and curriculum, and way ahead of the school's technology curve. Get involved or get out. Either way, get out of the kid's way and let them excel!
Peter Blaise says: Yeah, blame the students because their teachers are stupider than they are! This is ludicrous, expecting smarter students to protect the idiots put in a position of responsibility "over" them. Note that the students are too young to be held to contract responsibilities, so blaming them for loosing millions of dollars of federal grants is just insane! Someone has everything backwards! Yes, its hard to be smarter than kids these days, and it's hard to take responsibility for a school and it's students. So? The school should grow or die, and stop blaming their customers for how hard their job is. "If it wasn't for these dang customers, this job would be a shinch." The students are customers. Serve them.
Hi Heppelld0,
When you say you maintain the PCs using a boot CD, therefore, the students must also be able to boot from a CD, well then, I question your tech skills (and I question the [Shift] key on your keyboard, by the way - let's set an example for the kids by capitalizing the first letter of our sentences, okay?). You can password-protect and then set and reset the CMOS BIOS to boot from CD when you need it for maintenance, and to not boot from CD when you leave it for the students. If the PC cabinets are locked, then the students cannot easily reset the jumper that clears the CMOS (which would allow them to reset it and boot from CD without "permission").
Hi fellow SlashDotters,
Back to the question at hand, a few points come to my mind:
1: VOLUNTARY CIVILIZATION: We are a voluntary society, and this is an opportunity for everyone to learn how to voluntarily cooperate with others. I see the school completely missing an opportunity. Take the kids to see what happens in other venues to other people, like court. (Don't bring the kids as plaintiffs and defendants, but more as show and tell. And don't announce it to the court otherwise the Judge and Prosecutor may put on a show and send everyone on trial to jail just to look tough!) Let the kids see how a voluntary society works: "Trial is set for two weeks. You could go to jail after trial, so bring a lawyer." And defendants actually voluntarily show up in two weeks - amazing!
2: THEFT IS THEFT: If there were no computers in the world, and we were looking at, say, access to the library, and the kids found a back door open, and so they stole books, would the original poster say, "It's the school's responsibility to better lock the door, and so the kids are not responsible for stealing?" I think not. But, are we talking about getting into the library past security and just reading the books, or are we talking about stealing books, so to speak?
That said, I think no one is totally right or wrong here. I think each side has reasons supporting their behavior. I suggest that each has reasons to grow and change and trust each other more, reasons they are ignoring.
3: WE LEARN BY EXAMPLE (ONLY) and *THE SCHOOL* CREATED DAMAGED GOODS FIRST: I think we're talking about the kids trying to use the computers as computers. In opposition, the school is trying to offer what looks like computers but have been diminished to be more like dumb terminals. They want the students to be complicit in that compromise and play along.
I disagree with locking the computers so tight just because they might be used for bad stuff or just because they might be a challenge to maintain or just because someone wants to track their use. I recall the urban legend of the Department of Defense buying portable computers, then chaining them to people's desks! Doh!
The school is damaging the computers first by locking them so tight that they are no longer computers anymore, but are diminished to being mere dumb terminals. To some extent, it looks like anyone, especially kids (who are new to the experience of a voluntary society) might struggle with such a compromise, especially in comparison to their own home-computers where they can accomplish all sorts of neat and inventive stuff. I know, they can download and connect to all sorts of anti social and even illegal activities, also. But, an overly secured computer is more of a tease and a taunt in their faces than it is a useful tool. It sets an abusive example by the school, perhaps like offering books with some words or pages redacted out. They are saying, in effect, "We are more important than you. We decide that you all are not trustworthy. You can only have a compromised version of what we provide for ourselves."
Kids want to fully experience their power, and learn, and grow, and be seen, and be celebrated, and be welcomed and incorporated into the group. Hello? Isn't that the responsibility of what schools are supposed to be doing with all our property tax money