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by makmanalp 4096 days ago
It does sound like you were being a bit of a smartass :-)

But at that point, the teacher could have dealt with that two ways: way one would be doing exactly what he did, and way two would be to ask you how you did it, then find you a cool project to channel that curiosity into.

It's a sad thing when a teacher would rather beat someone into submission instead of give them a chance to grow.
2 comments
Someone1234 4096 days ago
It is worth keeping in mind, that in particular in the 1990s, many "computer" and "IT" teachers were just other types of teachers who happened to have been roped into it.

So to say they knew nothing about computing would be an understatement. Many of them literally only knew what was in the course material and nothing else. Yet they were the school's "expert."

If a kid broke a computer, everyone was screwed. The teacher couldn't fix it. And they would have to get in an outside company, like RM, or HP to fix it. That could take weeks.

This should go some way of explaining the mentality of these teachers. They were always living on borrowed time and knew they didn't know anything. A single bad incident would reveal all. That's why you get so many stories like this, it is also why it was unlikely that a teacher would be able to create a fun project for such a student (because they didn't know anything!).

Things have changed a lot since then. Not only are teachers technically better, but security is better, and technical support infrastructure is better defined (i.e. schools actually have an "IT guy" even if they're working for a third party).

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chinpokomon 4096 days ago
I was forced to take a CS High School course by my school district for being computer illiterate, despite having already taken two college programming courses in BASIC and Pascal, and working at a local Egghead Software. I took CS 2 AP and self-taught myself C in about a month. After figuring out how to get around the Novell network restrictions and running unsupervised Doom death matches and Street Fighter 2 tournaments with my classmates, I was reassigned as a student aid to run around the campus to fix teacher's computers.

Probably a better use of my time and channel of my curiosity.

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