Comments on: 11th Grader knows more than the teacher, gets punished for it

By: whoster69

whoster69 — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 16:59:57 +0000

Teachers need to remember to listen to their students and find out why they broke a rule instead of just punishing indiscriminately.

I’m a teacher. I don’t want mindless obedience. I want to help students learn to think for themselves.

By: Bob L

Bob L — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 02:59:56 +0000

You have to be kidding, “he was doing something wrong”- when did school become about following dumb arbitrary rules instead of about teaching and learning? If the teacher was open and respected the student he or she would have learned something new.

By: sarah

sarah — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 21:01:17 +0000

something like this happened to my friend last year, except he wasn’t told to stop and was block out of the whole school network instead.

By: david

david — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 04:16:29 +0000

thats immature.

macs are 50 thousand times more reliable, and they just work.

windows computers?!? wow.

we have windows xp and when our server goes out, like every month at least twice we have no computers

By: david

david — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 04:14:35 +0000

our school’s computers all have IE 7 and firefox..

but we arent really allowed to use firefox, as i asked my teacher yesterday.

i asked why and she said that the tracking plug-ins aren’t working in firefox…yet….sooo when we get the plug-ins we’ll be able to use both

By: cliff

cliff — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 01:00:41 +0000

Email addresses for school principal and superintendent:

jscudder@bigspring.k12.pa.us,
cboyd@bigspring.k12.pa.us,
csmith@bigsprint.k12.pa.us,
rwfry@bigspring.k12.pa.us,
dmartin@bigspring.k12.pa.us,

By: Jeff B.

Jeff B. — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 23:58:08 +0000

McHale,
Really? IE better than FireFox, WTF ARE YOU SMOKING????? IE has so many holes I’ve gotten hella shit from it and FireFox is the shit. I use XP SP2 every friggin’ day and I will always use FireFox over IE. IE just sucks balls. In fact, Netscape before IE, shit I’d even use Opera before IE…maybe…

By: McHale

McHale — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:22:35 +0000

He deserved to be punished because he didn’t do as he was told. His “better” browser opinion doesn’t matter to anyone but him. Besides, everybody knows that IE is better than Firefox.

I’m betting he was an Apple snob. They’re all that way – thinking they are better than everyone else.

-Mc

By: Ryan S

Ryan S — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:56:55 +0000

I like independent thinkers… and feel that anyone can do anything so long as they can rationally justify it and it is not harming anyone else. I prefer IE, but encourage intellectual debates.

By: James

James — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 06:23:39 +0000

lol he could serve it on saturday 8-11am…. He could be another member of the Breakfast club! Then there would be 6 of them!

Emilio Estevez, Anthony Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy and this kid!

By: pheer6224

pheer6224 — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:39:24 +0000

I hate the morons like that. My principal seems to think Linux is a malicious program.

By: pathbeyondthought

pathbeyondthought — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:04:48 +0000

I agree, Bill F. is a moron. Shut up Bill. Pay attention to a real argument like the one posted by Chris Cronin.

To Chris:
I couldn’t have argued it better myself; Firefox also has better security and is regularly updated as opposed to IE.

By: JayR

JayR — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:52:54 +0000

Wow, hard call here. I am a teacher and I would have listened to his story. I realize it may have been a hoax but it brings up a real issue in the classroom today. We have some bright kids out there. Sometimes their knowledge approaches that of the teacher. As a teacher we have to remember we are there to facilitate learning not force students to bend to our will. At the same time we need to have some type of discipline.

I know when I was in high school I was a smarta@@. A thing like that would have gotten me sent to the office because of my “reputation”. Maybe this kid had a reputation of being the same.

By: Nic D in Big D!

Nic D in Big D! — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:30:21 +0000

How this even a question . . .

kids need to Obey, Submit, Acquiesce.

Hey kid, Shut up and do what you’re told. Make great grades, have excellent behavior, take over the world and make your own rules.

You could be right all day, but being right and expressing it the wrong way is WRONG. The classroom environment is not a democracy. The teacher is the president, emperor, the king. AND sometimes a Drill Sargent.

Prepare them for the real world. If someone did this at my company “Please pick up your check on next Friday.”

By: John

John — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:48:40 +0000

Reminds me of my son getting detention for installing Linux on his lap computer because he was so tired of the BSOD. This was when he was in 3rd grade. During the parent/teacher meeting, the teacher asked what I was going to do to my son and I told her I was taking him to get a new paintball gun as a reward.

Now before anyone blows a gasket over this, the schools IT department couldn’t stop laughing, there was nothing in the form that the parents or teachers had to sign saying that he couldn’t install linux on it. The only restrictions was IM clients.

By: Roman411

Roman411 — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:39:49 +0000

If we all listened to all of our teachers over time we’d all be robots and have no opinions of our own. Bla bla…listen to your teacher. That s**t is so over rated.

By: Mr. B

Mr. B — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:36:34 +0000

I absolutely agree. The student deserved detention for using a mostly glitchy browser, and for being insubordinate towards his teacher. As a teacher if I ask you to do something three times and it’s not done, then it’s straight to detention, no questions asked.

By: Mack

Mack — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 11:52:01 +0000

I love Firefox, it just sucks less then IE.

By: doofusgumby

doofusgumby — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 08:06:03 +0000

FAKE! aaaaahahahahahaha. all you peeners who fell for it. voicing your mighty opinions from on high, aaaaaahahahahahahahahahaha. heh.

http://www.bigspring.k12.pa.us/news.php?action=view_article&article_id=2130

By: David

David — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 06:40:08 +0000

but also if the tracking plug-in doesn’t work for Firefox, just IE then yeah, get a d-hall.

By: David

David — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 06:38:40 +0000

Are you serious?

A) Firefox is already way better than Internet Explorer

B) That’s the most retarded punishment ever.

I use firefox at school instead of internet explorer because it’s a lot safer and my school just doesn’t really care i guess.

In my Business Computer class we aren’t allowed on the internet at all anyways, so i mean if he was breaking the rules for that then he should be punished.

but using a program that takes you to the same place is stupid to get punished for.

stupid teachers don’t know whats best.

But if he DOWNLOADED firefox in school on their servers and such, then yeah punish him. thats totally against the rules

By: Jeff B.

Jeff B. — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 05:43:17 +0000

God this is stupid, I don’t see why the school doesn’t have Firefox to begin with. It is the better browser.

Isn’t it because Firefox costs too much…

By: Smells Fishy

Smells Fishy — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:58:45 +0000

This is so fake…

By: b

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:38:02 +0000

I’m a senior in high school and have gotten in my own fair share of trouble. The fact is, rules are rules. The teacher made multiple warnings before any action is taken. There are good reasons for using a specific browser. The tracking program may only apply to that browser, or specific plug ins needed for the activity may only be installed on IE. How hard is it to follow an easy instruction such as “open IE”? It’s like complaining when you get a speeding ticket. It sucks, but were you breaking the law? yes.

By the way, we run firefox and IE on all of our school computers so I’m glad I wont’ have this issue.

By: Rush

Rush — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:14:06 +0000

If this is legit, maybe they should punish the person that wrote this detention notification letter. The grammar sucks. Someone should call the NEA on this SOB.

By: Dameon

Dameon — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 03:54:36 +0000

Despite the fact that the school will probably just chalk this up to being disobedient to the teacher, what I’m wondering is how can you punish him if he was using school equipment? If the school’s equipment has Firefox on it and the assignment is merely to “go online” to do your work, then the browser you’re using is irrelevant. At that point, that’s just the teacher fearing what she doesn’t know (Firefox) and punishing the student for simply having his own opinion on what he’d like to use.

By: mingkee

mingkee — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 02:54:54 +0000

the teacher thinks it’s omnisuperior
and it can command students to eat ???
if you don’t follow, you’ll be in trouble

By: punk

punk — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 02:15:31 +0000

@sublicon:

you’re a dick. stop trying to analyse what others analyse, we like to post our comments and we like to keep it that way.

By: zulu

zulu — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:09:08 +0000

Ok, here’s the deal:

It’s called protocol and respect for authority. Period. What the student should’ve done is switch back to IE (shudder) and carry on. Then, after class, approach the teacher and have the discussion. In this way you will have followed instructions and potentially have what you want in the future. What the student will probably get now is a teacher with his defenses up.

This isn’t about teacher’s pet dorks or billy bad@$$ non-conformists….just appropriately navigating authority/politics.

By: J.C.

J.C. — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:52:22 +0000

Not…………

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/12/17/student-given-detent.html