It’s official: America’s public school administrators are technologically illiterate, and are unfit to do their jobs. Or at least, that’s the case in Connecticut.
Why did I come to this conclusion? Consider the case of poor Julie Amero, a 40-year-old substitute teacher who is now facing 40 years in prison.
Her crime? Being hopelessly computer illiterate. And while most sane people consider the punishment to be a bit harsh for the “crime,” consider that the school district she was working for at the time was equally inept, to the point where their negligence endangered children and exposed them to pornography. The district needed a scapegoat to hide their ineptitude, and they chose to shoot the substitute. Sadly, the prosecutors and judicial system in her locale were all too willing to be complicit in the cover up.
The USA Today column speaks for itself, but allow me to summarize: Substitute decides to use a teacher’s computer. Teacher’s computer is hopelessly out of date and hopelessly vulnerable to malware. Sub leaves for a second, and comes back to oodles of kiddies staring at the screen, while adware showing pornography dances on the screen.
Sub freaks out and can’t handle the situation. Parents freak out that the kids were exposed. District and cops freak out and brand the sub a pervert. Sub goes to jail. And everyone involved is astoundingly stupid.
So kids, what have we learned?
1. Computers are bad
2. Public Educators are stupid
3. Connecticut has truly become a “nanny” state – don’t live there, ever.
4. You can solve all scandals by finding an inept person, blaming them for something they didn’t do (at least not intenionally), and all will be forgiven. And the real problem – the mere lack of some antivirus software on a computer – doesn’t ever have to be solved.
Class dismissed.