Re: Sixth-grader charged in grade switch caper

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

[Lets take a shot at the digest version of the feedback and see how 
this all goes. :)  - WK]


Forwarded from: Brooks Isoldi <bjisoldi () acsu buffalo edu>

I am by no means advocating that this child be sent to jail, but the
notion that the student was merely mimicking the teacher and had no
idea he was doing something "wrong" is garbage.  Sixth graders know
the difference between right and wrong and if he did not know the
difference, then why did he lie to get out of lunch?  Why not just
simply tell the lunch teacher "Hey, im going to my teachers room to
sit down at her computer and change my grades.  After all, I am just
doing what she does!".  Any coddling this child gets is simply going
to teach the kid that he can continue to do things like that and get
away with it.  Jail time?  Absolutely not. Detention, suspension of
computer priviledges and maybe be forced to go through a morality
class?  Yep.



Brooks Isoldi
The Intelligence Network
http://www.intellnet.org
877-581-3724 [Voicemail/Fax]


-=Fwd=-


Forwarded from: Eric Lee Green <eric () badtux org>
Cc: lowvoltage () 2600 co za


On Monday 17 February 2003 02:21 am, InfoSec News wrote:
> Forwarded from: LowVoltage <lowvoltage () 2600 co za>
>
> Jail Time! For doing what every sixth grader around the world wants
> to do - improve their marks?

Okay, as a former American school teacher who had students in his
class with probation officers, here's the deal: the kid isn't going to
get "jail time"  as such. Here's what happens. The cops come and
handcuff the kid. They take him to their car and drive him to the
juvenile detention center. He is placed into an interrogation room,
and a juvenile officer goes in and starts scaring the bejeezus out of
the kid about how wrong it is to use the teacher's computer without
permission, how they're going to take him to the juvenile jail at
Westfall where the older kids are going to bully him and beat him up
every day and make him lick their shoes and etc., and how he's not
going to see his mom and dad and home again, and once this "bad cop"
has him good and scared and crying, the "bad cop" leaves. Then comes
in the "good cop", who sits down and asks the kid why he's crying,
gets the whole story from the kid's perspective, and gently steers the
kid into admitting that it was wrong (and why it was wrong) and
basically extracts a promise from him that he'll never do it again.

Then the kid is released into his parent's custody. A few months
later, the trial is held, the juvenile judge listens to the kid's
story again, and sternly says that he's convinced that the kid won't
do it again, but he's putting the kid on juvenile probation -- the kid
has to go to school, has to behave and follow the rules, and if he
doesn't, then he will go to the juvenile jail. At this point the kid's
shaking in his boots remembering what the "bad cop" said about
juvenile jail, and promises effusively that he'll be good.

And for 95%+ of kids, that's the end of it. They fly straight,

The other small percentage of kids who encounter the juvenile
system... well, often they're coming from emotionally abusive
backgrounds, like many of the "hacker" kids I encountered at that
stage of my life, whose criminal misbehavior was often as much a cry
for help as it was a desire for intellectual stimulation. The process
doesn't work for them because they basically *want* (on an emotional
level) to be removed from their abusive family and sent to juvenile
jail. Another group of kids have criminal family members who steer the
kid wrong, and the above stunt doesn't work because the family members
have already been through the system and *know* that juvenile jail
isn't like what the "bad cop" said. (In some ways it is, there's more
bullying there than should be, but states are required to ensure the
safety and education of the kids in those facilities or else have a
federal judge swoop in and whang them for violating the civil rights
of those kids, so juvenile jails typically aren't anywhere near as
repressive as adult jails).

> Praise the child for ingenuity and his social engineering skills.

Praise a child for doing wrong? Sorry. Not I.

> Scold the teacher for leaving her workstation unlocked and
> publically accessible.

*DEFINITELY*. Frankly, if I were a school administrator, I would write
this teacher up for violating school policy (which undoubtedly says
that the terminal shall not be left logged in when the teacher is not
physically present).

> Sit the student down and explain to him from a moral perspective
> exactly why he shouldn't be changing his marks. Why did nobody tell
> him that he wasn't doing himself any good, and that he was depriving
> others of the fairness of the system?

Absolutely. This will be part of the juvenile justice process. The
techniques used will be a bit harsher than simply sitting him down,
but this is the basic goal.

> Sending a child like this to jail is NOT going to do any good to
> anyone.

Except he is *not* going to jail. I had 11 year old students encounter
the juvenile justice system for the first time (one school that I
taught at had a zero-tolerance policy for fighting, a policy that I
did not agree with since a fight or two is normal for eleven year
olds, even meek little guy me got into a fight or two at that age),
and they were scared, but they were not sent to jail.

> Obviously this 11 year old is still coming to an understanding of
> moral obligations.

In my experience, an 11 year old quite well understands his moral
obligations.  By this time he has been in the school system for five
years, and well understands what is considered right and wrong. But
what happens at age 11, in my experience, is that this is the age at
which the child's intellectual abilities start to explode, without a
corresponding explosion in his emotional maturity. At the same time
they come to the realization that, unlike what they thought at age 10,
the adults in their life are *not* infallible and in fact often make
mistakes. This peaks by age 13, where most children become rather
insufferable brats for a time, before everything finally starts coming
together around age 15-16. So basically, in that time frame, you get
your typical "know it all" tweener who has just learned that adults
are not the infallible beings that a 10 year old thinks about the
adults in his life, and thus at least here in the United States starts
believing that it's thus okay to "put one over" on the adult. It's
usually possible to earn this child's respect, but they no longer
automatically grant respect to the adults in their life. The way to
earn this child's respect is clear and well-defined standards
effectively communicated, consistent consequences (being "strict" and
not accepting misbehavior), while remaining friendly and engaged when
the kid is behaving properly. If you do not enforce consistent
consequences, the kid thinks you're "weak" and loses respect and sees
no reason to behave properly. This may simply be the culture of the
United States, but so it goes.

I suspect that this is not a "first offense" for this particular
child, and that the juvenile justice system is being called in to try
to "scare the child straight". Hopefully that will happen. For most
children it does work -- they come to the realization that they are
old enough that consequences for misbehavior are no longer restricted
to timeout or a firm talking-to, that there could be real and
future-impacting consequences to their behavior.

> He saw the teacher uses the computer to change marks. He understands
> he can use the computer change his marks. Simple. Consequences were
> not considered. Of course they weren't. Children don't understand
> the choice -> action -> consequence cycle.

An 11 year old understands the choice -> action -> consequence cycle,
but on an intellectual basis, not on an emotional basis. What the
school district and juvenile justice system will try to do is get him
to understand it on an emotional basis, using methods that perhaps are
emotionally brutal by the standards of most nations, but which do not
involve jail or any physical brutality. The juvenile justice system
does succeed with most kids who encounter it -- there is only a small
hard core of children who go on to become criminals and encounter the
juvenile justice system multiple times prior to "graduating" to the
adult system, and most of the time they are coming from abusive
backgrounds or backgrounds where their parents and older siblings are
already criminals.

  - Eric Lee Green, former schoolteacher

-- 
Eric Lee Green          GnuPG public key at http://badtux.org/eric/eric.gpg
          mailto:eric () badtux org  Web: http://www.badtux.org


-=Fwd=-


Forwarded from: James Goldberg <james.goldberg () attbi com>


Consequences and understanding "why it is wrong" is dependent upon
what the schools contract states, that most schools make the parents
and students sign at the beginning of school each year.  If the
contract does not state that accessing the network from someone else's
login, then the student's arrest/punishment should be rescinded.  
Betting money is on the school coming up short legally.

jsg



-=Fwd=-


Forwarded from: White Vampire <whitevampire () mindless com>


On Mon, Feb 17, 2003 at 03:21:28AM -0600, InfoSec News(isn () c4i org) 
wrote:

> Forwarded from: LowVoltage <lowvoltage () 2600 co za>
>
> Jail Time! For doing what every sixth grader around the world wants 
> to do - improve their marks?
>
> Praise the child for ingenuity and his social engineering skills.  
> Scold the teacher for leaving her workstation unlocked and
> publically accessible.

        Praise wouldn't necessarily be appropriate for the
circumstances.

> Sit the student down and explain to him from a moral perspective
> exactly why he shouldn't be changing his marks. Why did nobody tell
> him that he wasn't doing himself any good, and that he was depriving
> others of the fairness of the system?
>
> Sending a child like this to jail is NOT going to do any good to
> anyone.

        Agreed.  The best way to put perspective on this, would the
child be charged with a felony if it did not involve a computer?

        Obviously this is of dubious circumstances, but making an
example of an 11-year-old is in poor taste.

        I knew that cheating was wrong when I was 5.  I wouldn't paint
the child as entirely naive, but this has to be taken from a realistic
perspective.

<snip>

Regards,
- -- 
\   | \  /  White Vampire\Rem                |  http://gammaforce.org/
 \|\|  \/   whitevampire () mindless com        |  http://gammagear.com/
"Silly hacker, root is for administrators."  |  http://webfringe.com/


-=Fwd=-


Forwarded from: GertJan Hagenaars <isnpost () hagenaars com>

Hang on here.  Yes, I agree completely with this part: jail time is
way overboard and an incredibly stupid threat, and very typical of
"zero-tolerance" policies (zero-tolerance usually means zero-thought
by those who enforce it).

But making it seem like an 11-year old cannot distinguish the
difference between right and wrong, and suggesting to _praise_ the
brat goes _way_ too far in the other direction.

Obviously this 11-year old knew exactly that what he was doing was
wrong, since he spun a story about being in the teacher's office for
another reason: he tried to get out of being caught by lying.  He
definitely understood that there were going to be consequences, and
that what he was doing was not the right thing to do.

4-year olds may not understand "choice -> action -> consequence", but
11-year olds do (and I'm fairly sure that some 8-year olds do as
well).

When I was growing up, and I did something I wasn't supposed to do, I
got to sit down and write about it.  Not one hundred times "I shall
not change my reading marks", because that is just boring, and it's an
uninspired punishment.  No, I got to write "an essay" on what I did,
and explain what I learned from the experience.  That required
thought! Because if my reasoning wasn't good enough, I had to do it
over.  If the reasoning was good enough, the essay was destroyed
(shredded in front of me, and not graded) and thrown out.  "Wasted
effort" was the penalty of doing something wrong.

Later on I realized that doing the extra writing work carried its own
merit.  Oh, and before the bleedin' hearts take over: I'm not
emotionally scarred for life by having someone rip up my work in front
of my eyes.  It prepared me just a little bit better for life.

But to be honest: nobody has ever threathened to throw me in jail
either.

Here's a good penalty for the boy: wipe his marks, and let him take
eight reading assignment tasks.  The lowest five marks will stand firm
as his final mark.

Punishment, formal education and valuable life lessons, all rolled
into one, as it should be for those who break the rules.


Apparently, InfoSec News wrote:
% Forwarded from: LowVoltage <lowvoltage () 2600 co za>
% 
% Jail Time! For doing what every sixth grader around the world wants to
% do - improve their marks?
% 
% Praise the child for ingenuity and his social engineering skills.  
% Scold the teacher for leaving her workstation unlocked and publically
% accessible.
% 
% Sit the student down and explain to him from a moral perspective
% exactly why he shouldn't be changing his marks. Why did nobody tell
% him that he wasn't doing himself any good, and that he was depriving
% others of the fairness of the system?
% 
% Sending a child like this to jail is NOT going to do any good to
% anyone.
% 
% Obviously this 11 year old is still coming to an understanding of
% moral obligations. He saw the teacher uses the computer to change
% marks. He understands he can use the computer change his marks.
% Simple. Consequences were not considered. Of course they weren't.
% Children don't understand the choice -> action -> consequence cycle.
% 
% LV.
% 
% 
% On Thu, 2003-02-13 at 11:28, InfoSec News wrote:
% > Forwarded from: William Knowles <wk () c4i org>
% > 
% > http://www.gopbi.com/partners/pbpost/epaper/editions/wednesday/martin_stlucie_e394fc8032005260000b.html
% > 
% > By Nirvi Shah
% > Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
% > Wednesday, February 12, 2003
% > 
% > PORT ST. LUCIE -- While other students ate turkey tetrazzini in the
% > cafeteria, a St. Lucie West Middle sixth-grader used the excuse of
% > forgetting his lunch to return to his reading classroom and sat down
% > at his teacher's computer to change five reading assignment grades,
% > St. Lucie County sheriff's deputies said Tuesday.

CHeers,
GertJan.


-- 
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