Dealing With Student Misuse of Computers
The Kutztown Area School District in Pennsylvania has found a creative way to deal with students bypassing user restrictions on their computers - have them arrested and charged with felonies.
This is definitely one of those “shades of grey” issues for me. On the one hand, the students did violate the terms of their user agreement, sometimes repeatedly. The district has the responsibility to follow through on the violations. On the other hand, almost none of the 13 students charged did anything outright malicious. No changing of grades, stealing credit card numbers, or other traditional bad computing, just downloading iChat and installing unnapproved software. (However, the remote viewing of teachers and administrators on their computers was definitely not a good idea.)
Still, having the kids arrested seems like the wrong approach. If a kid in the wood shop repeatedly misuses the table saw, you take away the privilege of using the table saw. If kids misuse district laptops, then take away the laptops, suspend them, flunk them or expel them. Calling the police seems a little much.
The whole episode also underscores the perceptual divide between young people and older folks over what a computer is and how it is to be used. Adults tend to look at a computer with expectations for a limited set of options and uses, and see no big deal in locking the computer down to that small set of applications. Kids see the computer as a wildly adaptable mult-purpose device that can communicate, entertain, and create. To lock down a computer to a narrow set of purposes is to students the equivalent of having a radio that can only play four stations chosen by their parents, or a car with restrictors on it so it can only be driven back and forth to school, and only at 25 miles an hour. It just violates the whole concept of the technology for them.