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I wasn't screwing around with the network in high school, but got called in to the principal's office to answer some uncomfortable questions because (and I swear on my life I am not making this up) I knew how to change the desktop background on my account. This apparently made them suspicious of me. Simpler times, I know.

It was an early lesson in the fact that there are a lot of people doing IT in schools who, frankly, suck at their job. Most of the good IT people are getting paid way more elsewhere. The crappy ones are working in an environment where easily 1 in 50 of the students know more than they do and some of them feel threatened and lash out when someone is outing them for being lousy at their job, intentionally or otherwise. Like you did (disk quotas much?). Like they suspected me of.

Fixing the structural problem would require paying IT people in schools a rate that more closely matches what they'd make in industry. Fixing the social problem would require hiring people who understand what you and the author figured out: that nurturing people and directing their impulses productively yields better long-term outcomes for everyone.




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