Witness the idiocy of our public school system. Slashdot has the story of 13 Kutztown students who are facing felony charges for reconfiguring the laptops the school gave them. The student’s side of the story describes the administrator password taped to the back of the laptop.

Now, I don’t feel like getting into a debate about the intent of the laptops or whatever. My point is the attitude of the school towards the children. The students, as near as I can tell, did nothing immoral or illegal. They received a piece of hardware from the school, and the more curious, intellegent, and driven students wanted to make the most out of this equipment. As near as I can tell, the only changes that were made were installing chat software and some games.

These are the kids that I would probably like. These are the kids who tinker with their legos, mod their Xboxes, and generally make their toys do more than they were designed to do. These are the kids who take lemons and make lemonade.

These are the kids that have received felony charges for thinking different.

UPDATE: The charges have been dropped in exchange for 15 hours of community service.