Punished for Trying to Learn

Dan sent me this story this morning. It's about a 13-year-old kid who saw his father do something neat on the computer and asked how it was done. It eventually led to him trying to do it on his own and accidentally sending an extremely innocent message ("Hey!") to every Windows machine at his school. Oops.

I simply cannot believe the repercussions.

To me...this was a learning event. He got a lot of crap from a lot of people, and that's a big lesson in itself. He also learned that what he tried to do just didn't work that way....another lesson. Yes, he did need to also learn that things can go wrong and to make sure that doesn't happen, but I hardly think that necessitates a 3 day suspension.

I mean, hell, if he wasn't "such a good kid" he was going to get expelled???
All because he learned something and then tried to apply his knowledge in as innocent a way as possible.

I'm still fuming mad that his principal immediately called him a liar and refused to believe the facts presented to him. What an asshole.

The best part of this story follows...it gave me goosebumps as I read it:
Mr. Brandt from PC World Magazine wanted to send me a subscription. He said that if I couldn't learn computers in school, maybe his magazine would help teach me what my teachers wouldn't teach me.

Posted by Desiree on January 13, 2004 at 09:51 AM | TrackBack