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Comment by gavinlynch | Hacker News Reader

Right. But you didn't do it during school.

edit: Do I really need to point out that 2 felonies for this is obviously a gross overreaction by authorities and I hope all charges are dropped? That said, if you don't agree that it was universally horrible judgement to make a drano bomb during school, then there really isn't much to discuss between us and you can carry on downvoting (although I hope none of you are in charge of my future children). my longform response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5651593

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Oh, come on, having horrible judgement is the whole point of being a kid. The process of growing up and becoming an adult is all about learning and acquiring good judgement. How can you expect people to gain the judgement that comes with experience without allowing them to gain that experience by trying things, some of which will turn out to be mistakes? How are they supposed to know which things are going to be the mistakes without trying some of them and thereby learning the patterns?

I once did more or less the same thing as Ms Wilmot did, and you bet I did it during school, and I didn't even bother to tell anyone about my intentions first! I set up an apparatus under one of the fume hoods in the back of the chemistry lab, dissolved a bunch of aluminum, captured the hydrogen in a balloon, and then blew the whole thing up. It made a hell of a big bang, shattered a bunch of glassware, and startled the hell out of my lab-mates. Bad judgement? Well, yeah. Duh. But I didn't actually hurt anyone, and I sure learned something from the experience, and I'll bet that all my classmates learned something from it too, without having to deal with the embarrassment and clean-up that landed on my shoulders for being the nitwit who tried it.

Just imagine how fucked I'd have been if I'd had to face felony charges after that. My whole life might have been different, my whole software engineering career derailed before it had even started. What a stupid waste that would have been. What a stupid waste it is going to be for all of us if this idiotic treatment of Ms Wilmot is allowed to stand.

Did you read my post? I do not agree with these felony charges at all. I don't know what the reprimand should be, whether it's a lecture or 1 detention or expulsion. But I know the felony charges are wrong based on the few facts we currently have.

I did read your post, and I don't agree that any formal reprimand was necessary. What did she do that deserves punishment? She found chemistry so interesting that she went beyond her classes and came up with her own experiment, which taught her something she hadn't expected. Cool! Give her extra credit, put her in AP classes, sign her up for community college - this is exactly the kind of curiosity and independent initiative we need to encourage, not punish.

I think that was gavinlynch's point: there's got to be some kind of discipline, but a felony is insane. And by discipline, I'd imagine something like what happened to you would be reasonable.

"Ok, someone could have gotten hurt. Be more careful next time, and now clean up your mess!" With the severity of the lecture following the actual damage.

Kids should be encouraged to involve themselves with the immensely powerful forces so easily available today - but they've got to fear it (as in respect it). They need to know how destructive it can be, and then _harness that_. That's my $0.02 on it.

In the abstract, the severity of the lecture should not necessarily follow the actual damage - sometimes it should follow the potential for damage, perhaps? For instance, when I was a kid, I ran out into the road to chase a ball. A car stopped about 1 meter from me. Nobody and nothing was hurt (unless you count terrifying the driver and my mother on the sidewalk watching). Was I in trouble? Hell yes. If my mother had said 'well, nobody was hurt, no problem' then how was I supposed to learn how stupid it was?

Yup, you're right. In industry, that's called a near miss. It's treated with the motions as though you were hit by that car, but none of the consequences are enacted, since nothing in fact happened (YMMV). Basically, it's a freebie: lessons are learned without anyone getting hurt, which is about as good as it gets.

Near misses must be analysed and acted upon to be a useful force in accident or disaster prevention. Such actions can include changes to the facility, changes to protocol, but also educating or punishing workers.

As an example: Misconduct causing a near miss, such as smoking or using open fire near chemical storage, is grounds for instant dismissal, even in the "socialist" countries of NW Europe.

I strongly disagree. Its much better that kids do this during school, than trying to sneak around some kids backyard when the parents are out.

Say that all our fears come to true and something do go wrong and a kid get caught in the blast. If its in school, there are adults in ear shot with knowledge and tools to try handle the situation, and the kid won't just lay there and bleed out while his friends freak out while thinking about the consequences.

You can't prevent children from sometimes having a horrible judgement. You can however give them a safe place.

You can however give them a safe place.

Trying to give a "safe" place is, unfortunately, part of the problem. Instead of it being a place where kids can be helped if they get hurt, it has morphed into a (impossible) place where kids can't get hurt. Then, if something shatters that illusion, it's "off with her head!"

Okay, if you want to be pedantic about it ... Kiera didn't do her experiment "during school" either. It was 7am.

No. I have no desire to be pedantic about it. That's rather boring and lazy from an intellectual perspective.

My junior high science teacher would regularly fill a two liter bottle (with the base removed) with hydrogen generated by magnesium tablets in hydrochloric acid, then ignite the mixture by placing a match above a hole in the lid. During school. My high school physics teacher did something similar with gas from the countertop outlets and a coffee can.

Cool story. But you're talking about an official-, adult-, teacher-sanctioned event. Big difference. And to my main point: children literally don't have the neural capacity to make the judgement of when it is, and is not, appropriate to mix ingredients together that will make a blast of potentially concussive force :p

This much seems obvious to me.

I think people are mostly mentioning the "sanctioned" stories to avoid the potential for incriminating anyone. Besides, a mild rebellious streak might be a good thing for a scientist, kids are smarter than people give them credit, and excessive deference to authority is probably more harmful than a little curiosity gone awry. I think smart kids need to do more without asking, especially if they come from a restrictive environment that wouldn't give permission anyway.

Yes, you do need to point it out because this story is the perfect storm of naivete from HN. It sparks all the irrational nerves of the pro-science crowd with the hints of anti-science, the 'man' keeping the 'hacker' down storyline, the 'school is so structured it sucks' crowd, and definitely the anti-government group here. And we can't forget the 'Aaron Swartz didn't do anything wrong' crowd.

Sure, this story has an overzealous prosecutor looking for an easy score and to set an example, but the way people talk you'd think she was following teacher instruction in a lab and an accident happened and for some reason she's being persecuted for it.

She should've known better and done what the rest of us did - set the thing off in the forest behind the school.

The problem is the potential for felony as an adult. That's life-ruining stuff there, and people don't want to go soft on protesting that sort of severity. Without malicious intent, it's hard to rationalize it as criminal behavior, rather than

... rather than foolish recklessness. Plus a lot of us remember having far fewer rules, like complaining about not being able to bring knives to school (talked my way out of losing my multitool in high school). People feel strongly on What's-the-World-Coming-To topics, so expect some passion. It'd be a bit worrying if we didn't see it.

Blew tons of stuff up when I was in middle school. Didn't blow anything up at school, as I didn't want to, you know, get in trouble.

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