Iran Adds Hacking to Their High School Curriculum

• By Ginger Hill
• Sep 04, 2013

Being previously involved in education, having served students as a teacher, there are classes that I believe would greatly enhance the curricula of all schools. Take for instance money management skills to help students learn how not to create debt for themselves. How about adding a gun safety program so students can learn how to properly handle fire arms? What about adding self-defense classes?

Never would I have thought about adding computer hacking classes, though.

Iran, however, has thought differently.

A mid-August announcement from FARS, the voice of the Iranian Republican Guard Corp. (IRGC), stated that a computer hacking class will be added to the high school curriculum in Iran.

According to General Ali Fazali, acting commander of the Basij militia, this hacking class will be called “Defensive Readiness.” The plan is to simply add this hacking component to the curriculum already in place, “Civil Defense Training,” taught via a manual to junior and senior high school students.

“This year, we will witness changes in the contents, teachers and teaching hours of the defensive preparedness lesson,” said General Fazali.

Basically, Iranian students will be taught how to track and bring down drone aircraft by hacking into their computer systems.

As I sit here writing, shaking my head in disbelief, I can’t help but think of how teaching hacking can and probably will go terribly wrong. It’s highly probable that once students have the skills to hack they won’t stop with drones, hacking anything and everything they dislike in an attempt to make a statement or just to wreak havoc for fun.

Besides that, people are naturally curious. I know that if I learned a new skill, I would want to try it out immediately…not wait for a situation, like a drone to fly into my country/territory, to occur.

Going even a bit deeper, can hacking really be taught? Think about it. Hacking is about knowing each and every detail of a computer system, and being able to find holes and backdoors that give unauthorized access. This takes ingenuity, reasoning and trial and error…and of course, patience. Can characteristics like this be taught, or are these just a part of an individual’s natural chemistry?

Truth of it all is, by the time you have finished reading this article, Iranian students have learned one more element related to computer hacking, bring them closer to their ultimate goal of hacking drones.

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/micah-d-halpern/iran-hacking-school_b_3836482.html?utm_hp_ref=tw 

 http://hackersnewsbulletin.com/2013/08/iran-will-teach-drone-hacking-in-high-schools.html