You seem to be missing the point. The guy you're shooting doesn't have to wear the watch, you do.

I grew up in the midwest and prefer the west coast. When I want snow, I can go to the mountains to experience it.

I have a few relatives who expressed displeasure because I bought an imported car 16 years ago (don't blame me for wanting a well made car when America's big 3 where producing a lot of junk). I still drive that car today; they've had to replace their American made cars a couple times. They lived a couple of states away from Michigan, I'd guess that Michigan itself would be worse. As a techie, I want to be able to figure out what works instead of clinging to tradition.

I also wouldn't want my kids anywhere near Detroit schools.

The problem with that is that many programming languages have "features" that programmers misuse resulting in security holes (especially in PHP).

If a language makes it difficult to do things safely, it's reasonable to blame the language.

There's a big difference between fired and resigning.

That external pressure you mentioned is a form of the free speech that you're saying no longer exists. I think it was an overreaction, but people are free to have and express their opinions.

The only question related to this article is how much internal pressure their was and whether it caused the resignation.

There are a ton of open source tools out there (not to mention Microsoft's Visual Studio Express is free). I'm not sure how much teachers know about these tools, but that's a different issue.