High School Student In Detention For Using Firefox
An 11th grader at Big Spring High School in Newville, PA has 2 hours of detention on December 19th for using the Firefox Browser.
In the letter they call firefox “foxfire.exe”.
You can open the letter here as well to get another view (tip- click on the pic once you get there):
DETENTION FOR USING FIREFOX
Edit: Update >>> Detention For Using Firefox A Hoax?
That’s totally messed up!
There must be a dance to be done in firefox that this school is aware of, eh?
Ah, the clueless masses who are educating our children.
ARGH!
That was supposed to say “The technologically clueless masses that are educating our children.”
In some instances katm, you are unfortunately correct with both comments.
What was the student doing installing software on school computers anyway? It seems that should be a much worse penalty than detention.
I should beable to use whatever I want no matter where I go to school or work? Really people…Really
There are reasons organizations adopt certain software for and that’s called manageability.
thats messed up
Think god four tha untied stayts edukayshenul sistum! Werkd lyke a charme four me!
Actually Robserver, he could have been using a portable version of firefox on a jump drive. This wouldn’t have required an install of any software on the local machine and would therefore have been no proof that it was even on there in the first place.
This is why we will be sending our children to independent schools rather than government schools.
At my old job, I would have been fired for installing FireFox on a work computer. Some companies or schools forbid the installing of non-supported applications, to cut down on tech calls (if its ok to install FireFox.exe, must be ok to install NOTAVIRUS.EXE). The kid is just youn and didnt fully understanding the rule.
2 hours of detention for installing an non-supported application, slap on the wrists if you ask me. If this was a job, he’d be written up or fired.
I think we should all ban together and send hundreds of mail to that school and teacher, that is ridiculous, get your head out of the sand!
Did IT install firefox / say it was ok to run and the Teacher did not get the memo.
Another reason to Home School…. *lol*
And people think they can’t teach as well as ‘professional’ school teachers.
(That comment is from my wife. Who uses Firefox daily. And has even been trying to get into Linux.)
***
Note, the issue is NOT about installing non-supported applications. It’s quite possible that Firefox was already installed on the machine. And that is not specified. I am not even sure said instructor.
To robserver and PunkyDukester:
Who says this was something he installed on a school computer? Maybe it was his own laptop. Even if it was a school computer, haven’t you ever heard of portable firefox?
Maybe Internet Explorer on this computer was so plugged up with “helpful” toolbars and other crap that it was virtually unusable.
Heck…the teacher didn’t even know what the program was called, so how could you possibly begin to determine that it had been installed on a school computer by the student, against the school’s IT dept wishes?
If this were my kid, the first thing I’d be doing would be calling the principal and figuring out exactly what the problem is supposed to be with using something other than the status quo.
If that didn’t work, or even if it did, I’d be calling the local papers and TV stations. Then I’d be calling a few local LUG’s and getting the whole lot of them to show up at detention with my kid.
I’d also go myself, with a laptop loaded with Linux/Firefox, and various other alternative software, and doing some work in full view of the students and teacher there. I’d even do some open source advocacy to everyone involved.
And I’d keep riding the powers that be at this school to get this teacher disciplined, as well as the principal and assistant principal. Their names are on the letter, after all.
Boy did the tools and fools come out for this story. This is a KID in SCHOOL, not an employee at a business. If the school doesn’t want people running non-approved applications, it’s their job to have the appropriate security policies set on their computers. You might as well leave out a pack of gum on the floor and give detention to any kid that picks it up for violating the school’s no-gum policy.
After the first time of being told to close it, the student should have complied. It doesn’t matter what the program is. That’s the reason for the detention.
For those saying that he should be in trouble for using non-school software on school computers, that’s not what this letter-to-parents says was the problem. They didn’t claim to say stop using firefox.exe because it’s wrong to install unapproved stuff on their computers. They claimed to say stop using firefox.exe and get back to work, which implies they don’t believe he was using firefox to do the schoolwork he claimed he was doing using that program. If they’re going to punish him for installing or running non-approved software on their computers, that’s fine, but they should give that reason for doing it, not some other reason which is so much harder to believe. If they’re going to clain that he was not doing his schoolwork, and using firefox.exe as their reason for coming to that conclusion, sorry, but that’s dumb and so is this teacher. And I’m not appliying any “technologically” prefix to my use of the word dumb. Sounds like they were not willing to discuss and have things explained to them, which could very well have led the teacher and other school officials to the conclusion that he was indeed doing schoolwork, just using a different tool to complete his task. If they’re not willing to discuss and have things explained, then they are dumb in a pretty generic sense, IMNSHO.
Right. So we expect teachers to ALSO know about every web browser and computer program too? Where do you draw the line? Would Mozilla be ok (after all, firefox and mozilla are cousins), how about opera. What if they had firefox on FreeBSD or Linux? Saffari on MacOS? Yo need to draw the line somewhere or it just gets too difficult to manage, and the easiest line to draw is “one”, that “one” in this case is IE. That may change, but for right now, let the teachers do their jobs and stop fighting this holy war on their time.
Posting the school’s number is just a nuisance for the system draining their already strained resources.
You want to make a difference in education… how about VOLUNTEER other then harassing. Oh, but that takes effort… the same effort many say the teachers don’t give.
Please read the memo. The kid wasn’t put in dentention for using Firefox. He was put in detention for disobeying three direct requests from the teacher to stop using Firefox. call me crazy, but that seems reasonable to me. It doesn’t matter if the teacher knew or didn’t know that Firefox is a web browser. Better, not better, installed, or portable… none of that matters. A school classroom, during school hours, is not a good place to make a political statement about the school system’s choice of supported software. If the kid wanted to make a point, he should have done it at a PTA meeting, or by starting an awareness campaign and bringing attention to the school board. Of course, if attention and martyrdom was his ultimate goal, then he performed very well.
This student was fortunate in receiving a relatively early lesson in the dissonance between what is being taught in civics (or whatever they call it now) class and reality. The unfortunate sail through school believing all the bullshit they’re taught about, for example, the US having a working Constitution. By becoming accustomed to conflating truth with Authority, they end up spending their whole lives parroting whatever they’re spoon-fed, no matter how nonsensical it may be.
The truly unfortunate go so far as to sign up for military service, believing it to be a way of “serving my country” or “protecting our freedom” rather than the actual “promoting US dollar hegemony”. Cruelly, they sometimes pay with their lives for their honest mistake.
I salute this young person and wish him (or her) the bright future that is likely to follow, with or without my wishes. May all students at some point be sent to detention for similar “infractions”.
This is a great story, and as a blog owner myself, I love using interesting paperwork in my stories, but your image is too small to read clearly. Try a width of at least 480 in the future.
The school IT department has other things to do than set policies to make their systems secure against students who think they know better. Generally these students are the first ones to complain when the services that it *is* their job to provide go down.
I work on a lot of industrial sites as a telecommunications technician. Often, it is a condition of vehicle entry that if a vehicle is left unattended, the keys must be left in the ignition, and alarms must be disabled. This is for safety reasons, in case the vehicle needs to be moved in an emergency. Does this mean anybody who walks past is allowed to drive it?
i am a technician for a high school in the UK, and our school actually promotes the use of Firefox, and it is installed on many of our computers. We have found that it is easier to use than sone other applications. Also there is nothing wrong for using a software if a child i actually using it for his/her work! And how can you get firefox.exe mixed up with foxfire.exe!
Heck, at my University, they encourage you to use Firefox since they claim that IE7 will cause more errors in their online databasing software.
Really, this isn’t a technological issue. He got detention for threatening the teacher’s sense of “authority”, not for using Firefox. I applaud him for trying to explain his position to an inferior intelligence: to educate the educator, as it were. Public schools aren’t here to educate however, they’re here to instill conformity and submission to authority. So he suffers the backlash. Fuck the system.
to chris:
welcome to the world of overreacting. As “uberbah” says, this is a kid at a school. point a) the kid got detention - whoop-de-do, call see if it can be appealed, sure (since it could have been a misunderstanding on the teacher’s part) but punishment? point b) trying to involve the media just shows you to be completely out of touch, there are FAAAAAR worse things going on in schools than a 2 hr detention for a kid using a program that may or may not have been installed, and may or may not have been approved by the school for use. I am not saying that firefox or its ilk are bad programs, or that open source is a bad thing, but using this to “advocate” it seems like your agenda isnt really fairness to your kid. Merry Christmas
David,
I understand your frustration here but you’re off base. It’s a web browser, and browsing the web is a visual medium. The teacher assuredly knew the assignment. The teacher could easily look at the screen and see that the kid was, or was not, doing his work. This detention could have been easily justified in many ways: “installing unauthorized software,” “playing web flash games instead of working,” and some other related lines come to mind. But to claim that the kid was not working because “firefox” != “iexplore” is patently absurd.
It may not be so much that he was using an alternative browser (whether he installed it or used a protable version). If it was a school computer, which it probably was, then the problem may have been about the fact that since he is not using the main browser installed on the machine, they can’t block him from being on websites that the school disapproves of.
Regardless of the actual problem, the student should have listened to the teacher and closed the program. Then after he obeyed, he should have gone to the teacher to discuss what the student thought was right and what the teacher thought. An 11th grader should know better than to argue and continue doing the infringement.
There isn’t enough information here. What if the work was being done on the student’s laptop and the student doesn’t have Internet Explorer or Safari (at one point, I had removed Safari from my Mac OS install and IE from my Windows XP install)? At that point the student can’t go back to work because he doesn’t have what the teacher believes to be a valid program. I won’t jump on the teacher for telling him to go back to work (not understanding), but I will jump on the teacher for not listening to the student trying to explain that they were using an alternative to do said work. But overall, there just isn’t enough information to truly judge who or what is at fault just yet.
What’s so fucking hard about using internet explorer, it’s the school’s fucking computer, just do what your teacher says and you want get in trouble.
The kid probably knew it was against the rules, this is exactly the kind of crap I would do when I was in high school. All the smart kids figure out how to install and hide apps they aren’t supposed to. He may have thought he was making some moral stand against M$FT and was praying for fire hoses. Better yet, he simply wanted a copy of the letter posted on this blog.
its funny you all are so outraged by this. yes, the teacher didn’t understand the technology, but in all likelihood there is an IT policy at the school against Firefox if for no reason other than to compensate for the teacher’s lack of understanding.
Those of you disagreeing with the fact that strict desktop regulations are a reality at most institutions might as well argue against gravity. Please understand that taming your personal home computer doesn’t qualify you to have strong opinions about the IT policies of a government institution.
2 hours detention is barely a punishment unless you hate reading books.
NOTE: I mean, yes he was doing his work when the teacher came, but kids are fast. And if the blocking software that many schools use can’t filter the way it is supposed to, it presents a possible problem. It doesn’t matter if he was or wasn’t doing something actually wrong. The problem is that he very easily had the potential.
Sure, kids figure out how to get around these things all the time. But they can usually cover their tracks. FireFox instead of IE is not going to cover your tracks.
Check out the reply from the school. They are declaring this a hoax! http://www.bigspring.k12.pa.us/news.php?action=view_article&article_id=2130
According to the Big Spring School District website the whole thing is a hoax:
http://www.bigspring.k12.pa.us/news.php?action=view_article&article_id=2130
So unless the disciplined student speaks up to defend this image I would say there is nothing to see here.
Sadly I’m going to have to agree with some of the above people.
While I use Firefox both at home and at work, there are reasons that departments require students and employees to sign an AUP. Most Technology departments use a system like Ghost to keep all the machines in the same patching schedule and at the same update level. By installing software not approved by the school it opens up security holes that will not be addressed in scheduled patches.
I have never heard of a class that requires computer usage failing to issue an AUP. If there is an AUP issued, 99% of the time installing FF will violate that policy.
The better question would be, why would the student be allowed to install a program that modifies the registry? That’s a very trusting IT dept….I would hate to work there.
I’m all for using Firefox and I will continue to sing it’s praises, but it’s obvious that the student was doing something wrong. First he thought he knew more than the teacher, and then went the wrong way about proving his point. Once that point failed to register, he continued to disobey someone with authority. That being the case he was disciplined.
I don’t care if one is in the right, there are times that one needs to realize his position and pick his battles. I would hope that would be something learned in school, but apparently tact is a lost art.
Part 2.
Slashdot just reported that this was a hoax.
Hoax!!!
http://www.bigspring.k12.pa.us/news.php?action=view_article&article_id=2130
This story is a hoax. Hope you got your adwords money out of it.
This is a hoax. but it’s a better browser. It’s possible that the extensions might be rouge but the browser isn’t.
Have a nice day.
I guess some student just wanted to get back at his school. I’m sure after it got slashdotted they were innundated with e-mail and phonecalls.
RC
WTF kind of High School does he attend? They can’t even decide if “a detention” or “an detention” is the correct English.
ewwrfeaafcf
It’s not ROUGE it’s ROGUE!!!
Don’t say rouge, i hate you, i hate you, i hate you, i hate you, i hate you!
ARG!!! Rouge is the frigging color red in french!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rogue
ARG!!!
A smart kid figured out that if he attacked a sacred cow, many “adults” would come rushing to his rescue and make things hard for the school. Good work there, I say.
The real question is, why didn’t the teacher force him to install a real browser, like Opera?
thorin: that’d be because the little dumbass who edited the letter can’t fucking spell. Read the most recent comments, dude, it’s a hoax.
Regardless, if you’re in high school, and you want to stay there, you sometimes have to do what the teacher tells you to. That’s life, kid. If you don’t like it, drop out and get a GED instead.
[...] This is extremely funny. Somebody posted a prank about a high school student getting detention for using firefox. It ended up on slashdot. [...]
I was close to getting 5 days of ISS (in school suspension) for using Firefox at school. They claimed that it was “illegal software download”, “improper use of school technology”, and “a hacking tool”. The “tech team” at my school consists of 2 people, a man who video tapes girls changing on the band front bus, and a lady who thinks the easy fix for everything is power cycle it, if that doesn’t work, then it’s junk.
[...] was a story on Slashdot about a kid who was given detention for using the Firefox web browser when his teacher said to use Internet Explorer. This later turned out to be a hoax, but it sparked some interesting discussion, most notably about [...]
What are you, 5 years old? I’m sure by now you’ve heard this was a hoax. Granted you’re getting web traffic for a libelous, fake event (and unfortunately, slashdot sometimes posts a bad blog entry or two), but you’re publishing some school’s phone number and address. Why? Did some teacher at the school hurt your feelings or give you a bad grade?
Not really sure what your intentions are…
The fact that the letter says “a(n) Detention” and “Reporting Administrator” strongly points toward either an illiterate writer or a hoax, or both.
This happend to me too, in about the same way but I wasnt suspended. I just got about an hour of work detail (picking up trash around the school).
Yeah, like the fucking school is going to write up and print a full-page letter when you get a detention. Big deal. I got day-long in-school suspensions and there was never any paperwork done about it.
Slashdot is reporting that this is a hoax
“Update: 12/17 20:09 by SM One of the school officials was nice enough to contact us and let us know this is a hoax. If you are planning on calling the school please refrain from doing so, I’m sure they have had enough excitement for one day.”
And, strangely, this site isn’t updating with the info that this was a hoax.
[...] Detention For Using Firefox A Hoax? Yesterday we and many other websites shared with you the student at Big Spring High School who indicated he has detention on December 19th for using the Firefox browser, after his teacher told him to close it and get back to work. You can see that story here. [...]
Gman, in a word you’re wrong, even if it wasn’t a hoax. Its not the teacher’s place to vet every browser out there. Period. If a student isn’t doing the approved method of instruction for a class, and disobeys the teacher, they get punished (sent to the principal, detention, whatever), period. There is a time and a place to bring up such things. This was neither. Teacher tells you an assignment must be done in blue or black ink and you hand it in in pencil… because its “better”, since you can erase it, expect to lose points. period
The teacher for one of my IT classes was a huge open source advocate and encouraged all of us in our classes to use firefox (which we already did, but it’s the thought that counts), half because we were doing lots of web design and it is inestimably useful to have a browser that actually complies with web standards and the other half because he hates microsoft.
Happily enough once he got bumped up to head of the network it was made the default browser and the only one available on the application client on the network (you could still access it on the start menu and through file explorer how ever).
[...] High School student gets detention for using Firefox [...]
My high school didn’t care whether students installed or ran any programs; they knew that any changes made to the computer would disappear as soon as it was rebooted. I often ran Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice (all installed on my USB drive) and all I got was an occasional curious “What program is that?” or “How come you’re not using this?”. Now I’m in college, and all my teachers know about those programs and respect my choice to use them.
This is a hoax:
http://www.bigspring.k12.pa.us/news.php?action=view_article&article_id=2130
It appears that the teacher here is the victim.
Even before seeing this statement from the school district, I believed this to be the case, due to most of the language being in correct English, apart from a few words and phrases with grammatical errors — and those being the ones describing the teacher’s assessment and actions.
If this being a fraud is indeed the case, I expect that the person who altered the detention letter gets expelled permanently, or, if not a student, charged with fraud and impersonation.
That’s been addressed as part of the post above (that this could be a hoax) >>> (per the school), it’s below the letter above, you’ll see the link.
Many have indicated they’ve had this issue at their school as well.
Some schools have tightened up so as to allow Firefox, while others have not.
Will be interesting to see how it turns out, assuming we hear further. Would like to hear more, just out of curiosity!
I think this hoax brings up a larger problem with the school systems. Teaching in mass does not work well. Even while many students get a basic understanding of some concepts it fails miserably for most. Students are prevented from being efficient learners. By limited sanctioned activities students don’t learn-not efficiently or much anyway. Taking lots of test in the short term does not increase long term knowledge. It is not beneficial in the long term. Allowing students to deviate is the answer.
school officials contacted slashdot.org and said it is a hoax.
Well, not to stir the pot, but if you were the school district, and your name was on the line, wouldn’t you say it was a hoax too? Better than publically admiting the mess is true… Notice they never showed any proof of the reality of the situation? (They just said they have proof)…
[...] was reported yesterday that a student at Big Spring High School had been given detention for using Firefox as their [...]
I “stumbledupon” another site today claiming that the letter is a hoax if i find the page again i will post the link. It includes a statement from the school
http://dissfunktional.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/detention-for-using-firefox-a-hoax/
could someone tell me where to find the video??
Which video? The videos we are talking about in the threads currently are
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA7jKuk69Nw (Black Hawk Down)
and the child birth video here > http://dissfunktional.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/which-is-more-painful/
Believe this or not but i was there when it happened and what it says is true. The only thing that is a lie on that form is the fact that he was doing his work.
Ok, can you prove it?
Are you a student, faculty?
Would be interested. I’ll carry it on the site if you have hard proof.
No hoax’s.
okay, i graduated from big spring 2 years ago and here are my thoughts on the whole thing. in the grand scheme of things, 2 hours in detention is not going to kill the poor boy. suck it up and deal. there are people who have gotten detention for lesser things.
[...] anonymous reader writes “Several sites are reporting that a student has been given detention for using Firefox to do his classwork. No, really. The student was in class, working on an assignment that [...]
wow. my school uses mozilla. it IS better =)
That doesn’t make any sense, what were they thinking?