Eleventh Graders and Nuclear Bombs
by revx
I volunteer two mornings a week through a program called TEALS - Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (tealsk12.org).
Monday and Wednesday, I pull myself out of bed at 6:40 a.m., ride the 2 train into Brooklyn, and teach a class of 11th graders how to program, before getting back on the train and arriving at work before 9:30 a.m.
It's an incredibly rewarding experience.
Although, as in any class, there are some slackers, there are just as many bright, curious students interested in learning how to build computer programs. Many of the students have little experience on a computer besides PowerPoint and Word, so for many of them it's a first exposure to programming concepts and thinking like an engineer.
The class started with an introduction to Snap!, a block-based click-and-drag program based on an earlier iteration called BYOB, which is ultimately based on Scratch. Snap! runs in the browser, making it easy to use in a classroom of 30 students.
Attendance is a problem.
Since we're the first class of the day, many of the students wander in well after the 8 a.m. bell. Especially on days of bad weather or school field trips, the class can dip as low as five or six students.
Today started out as one such day.
Many of the students were on the senior trip, leaving a skeleton crew of students in attendance. This scuttled my lesson plan for the day, since I would just have to teach it again when the rest of the class returned.
I often read 2600 on the train to and from teaching. So, when I was wracking my brain to come up with a lesson for today, I realized that I could print out some articles from 2600 for the students and let that occupy their time.
I grabbed a PDF of Volume 30 from the 2600 site for $10 and printed out pages 127 to 178.
Then I made an announcement, something like, "Hey, if you want to read a super cool hacker magazine, come on up and pick out an article that you find interesting. I haven't read them, so please use your own judgment about whether they are good articles or advice!"
I was nervous, of course, that I might get in trouble for giving unfiltered 2600 articles to men school students. But I figured that these were smart students who would really appreciate the opportunity to learn more about computer (in)security and be able to explain to an irate principal that I meant no harm in distributing the articles.
One male student took me up immediately, taking first "The Right to Know" by the editors, and then "Controlling the Information Your Android Apps Send Home" by Aaron Grothe. He was fascinated, telling me afterward that he was interested in setting up the Android proxy from the latter article since he suspected there was spyware on his phone. Two female students were also interested. I wandered over and showed them the articles that I had printed. One immediately took "Defeating Forensic Attacks on Full-Disk Encryption" by MoJo.
I noticed, hidden among the others, "Fun with the Minuteman III Weapon System: Part 2" by Bad Bobby's Basement Bandits. Realizing that an article about hacking the United States nuclear weapons system could get me in a bit more trouble than the rest of the articles, I attempted to shuffle it to the back of the pile. But, like a cat who somehow knows that you're allergic, she picked out that article to read. Sigh.
At the end of class, I stopped by to check in. "Hey," I said, "What did you think of the article?" She turned to me, and smiling said, "I want to build a bomb!"
I had no idea how to respond to that. Call the police, maybe? "Uh, O.K. then," I managed. I'd screwed up. She was going to detonate explosives and when the FBI asked her where she'd heard about how to blow things up, she was going to confess my name, and I was definitely going to jail.
"Not to kill anybody," she clarified. "Just to figure out how one works."
"Oh, that's very hacker of you," I replied, panic attack over.
To clarify, the student in question is happy and smart and, in retrospect, I should have encouraged her to check out nuclear physics in college.
My hope is that shell be encouraged by the article to be curious about how systems, both security and nuclear, work. And perhaps even pursue her dream of learning how explosives work by becoming a pyrotechnician or nuclear physicist.
But in the event that a nuclear bomb levels the public school I volunteer at, I'm really, really, really sorry.