Should’ve Had Better Brain Filters

Many years ago, my oldest child was in junior high. He took a computer class his first year in junior high. His teacher was interesting. On Parent-Teacher Night, she announced to all the students and parents that if a child in her class could hack the school’s Internet filters, they would get an automatic A for the entire year in the class. She even had this printed up on handouts she gave us parents.

My oldest child can be a challenge. I never wanted to be one of his schoolteachers. He just thinks of the most random things to do and then does them without thinking of consequences. (Thankfully, he has mostly grown out of this!) I could tell that my son was going to take her up on this “offer”/challenge. He was good enough with computers that I was pretty sure he could do it.

I warned the teacher that the school district did NOT want students hacking the Internet filters, especially not my son. Who knows what he would find that I didn’t want to know about?

Less than two weeks later, I was called up to the school on very little notice. My son was going to be expelled. That was all the info I had before I got to the school. I had a feeling it was about the computer class, so I brought in the handout the teacher gave out on Parent-Teacher Night.

I was right. He had hacked the Internet filters successfully, and because of this, the school was going to expel him. Permanently.

I had quite the chat with the principal. He was completely shocked that the teacher had challenged the students this way but claimed it didn’t matter because the school had rules that my son should have known. He was flabbergasted when I called the Superintendent of Schools for our city. He was more shocked when I chatted with him on a first-name basis. It might have been an entitled thing to do but messing with my kids brings out my inner Mama Bear.

My son did not get expelled; he didn’t get punished in any way, mostly because the teacher was an absolute idiot. I later learned that this was not the first time she had issued this challenge, nor the first time a student was able to do it. She had been warned not to do it again, ever, and she had ignored that.

They had a new teacher in under a week, because you are just not smart enough to teach school if you openly challenge kids to hack the school’s filters.