There was a story on Slashdot about a kid who was given detention for using the Firefox web browser when his teacher said to use Internet Explorer. This later turned out to be a hoax, but it sparked some interesting discussion, most notably about when/whether a student should follow a teacher's instructions or orders when the student knows him/herself to be in the right.
When one poster in the Slashdot discussion said that the student should have followed the teacher's orders, wrong or right, another poster said: "So the lesson to be taught in the class room is that obedience is more important than being right?"
Actually, yes. Being right is not always the most important thing, but you'd be hard pressed to convince some people of that.
For decades now, popular media has portrayed the young rebel as being cool, and usually portrays the adults as being clueless. And as teens and tweens have surfaced as a prized market, more and more media pandering to these themes has been produced. Now combine that with a political and social arena in which being "right" has become more important than being effective and where people become heroes for holding true to indefensible positions. And out of all that comes a message to our children to engage in mindless, thoughtless individualism.
We've developed this mindset in America where we're told that it's more important to be right than to get along. It's more important to fight for meaningless wins on insignificant issues than to look at the big picture and just let the small stuff go. And because most of these kids don't have the knowledge, experience, or power that their teachers have, their egos are writing checks the rest of their brains can't cash. Even moreso, they're often jumping to unsupportable conclusions and defending them with zealous fervor. All of this takes away from time the teacher could be spending teaching or helping kids who really need help, because these kids think they're entitled to debate anything they don't support.
Whether it's right-wing kids giving their teachers guff when they try to teach Evolution, or liberal kids who disrupt the unit on Intelligent Design, they not only think they're right, they think they have a right to challenge authority in the classroom. And their parents, who have also been raised in this environment where arguments over Kirk vs. Picard have been known to escalate into death threats, encourage this behavior. They tell their kids to fight for what they know to be right and not back down, but too many of them neglect to teach their kids to play the game, work the system, and pick their battles wisely.
There are times to say you're right and times when it will suffice to merely know it. All these people who say the student in the hoax was right, let's get real. Using Firefox vs. IE to do an in-class assignment on the school's equipment... Is that really the hill you want kids to die on? The kid could have taken it up with the teacher after class, started a petition to get Firefox allowed, or taken it to the PTA or School Board. Willfully disobeying the teacher and arguing with the teacher during class over something this minor is not anything anyone should support.
When you ask me what's wrong with our educational system, I'll assign part of the blame to the adults and kids who believe that this kid was right to be disruptive and disobedient over something so insignificant. If you want to educate kids to defend and stand by their principles, that's great, but do it in a way that makes sense. Teach them examine and analyze their principles first. There's no better enemy for a position than an ignorant defender of it. Then teach them to pick their battles. Teach them how to determine what's worth the fight, then how to determine the best timing, method, and venue for fighting. Teach them how to use the system. And teach them that they are not entitled to an explanation and/or debate of anything they don't like the moment they decide they dislike it. At bare minimum, they can wait and talk to the teacher about it after class.
Thus endeth the lesson. Feel free to comment.
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