Microsoft to Build High School in Philadelphia, PA

LynchMan writes "According to the The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia is too be the home of a Microsoft funded High School. While having an inner city public school with a large tech fund ($46 Million) will be a great asset to those young students interested in technology, is the Philadelphia School District selling out to Microsoft really the only way to achieve this? Especially with all of the negative press that Microsoft has had recently, is this an attempt to do some good and help out those who cannot afford private school? Or is Microsoft just making sure that they secure themselves another generation of coders/admins/users? This being the first school of it's kind, will a Microsoft high school be coming to a town near you?" This looks very much like the Microsoft buses that toured from school to school a couple years back, but much larger and much more stationary.

Comments

Blinded By Hate

[Ken@WearableTech]

How could anyone have any question about this being a good thing? Microsoft is not building the school nor is it paying for the school to be built. The local school board is building it and MS is contributing technology and services to the school to see what happens to education when the school is afforded every technological luxury possible. This is an experiment! If afterwards the students bought MS products for themselves, so what, they are likely to anyway. If some of the students went on to be programmers and favored the Windows OS and Visual Studio, so what, it is already likely. Coke and Pepsi already give money to schools to put in only their product. Aside from the questions of health, do we cry out the these children's minds have been warped in the decision of who to favor in the cola wars? No.

If it was not for Microsoft this school would still be built, it just wouldn't have the technology.

I have the suspicion that those who object to this would think it would be the coolest thing if RedHat decided to help a school become a pure Linux organization, with a Zarus PDA for every child.

Re:Blinded By Hate

[dnoyeb]

I agree. Its win-win. Don't be a playa hater! I came up on microsoft. Many today will come up on linux. But many wont come up at all till they get to college.

Its a great idea!

We know they will learn almost exclusively microsoft products, but thats ok. They will be learning computers.

I wonder if Microsoft will eliminate their auditing for the school out of fear that they too would be found with 'illegal copies' of Microsoft products...

Re:Blinded By Hate

[Blob Pet]

I question it.

Anyone remember this?

Re:Blinded By Hate

[hellfire]

Double-standard red herring... caught ya!

Remember, Microsoft is a monopoly. They play by different rules. If Coke was a monopoly with 90%+ marketshare, you bet the government would be denying them any contracts to "extend" their reach into schools.

If Microsoft and Apple were 50/50 in overall dominance, it would simply be competition. Otherwise, Microsoft should be highly scrutinized when it comes to anti-competitive behavior.

Re:Corporate Sponsorship in Schools

[Kierthos]

Sent home after drinking a Coke? You must be kidding me...

Okay, we had a soda machine at my high school. I think it was a Pepsi machine, but I honestly can't recall. But it was just one machine, and it was not in the cafeteria, so it was not "tempting" people to buy ye olde nasty carbonated sludge.

Would someone at my high school have been sent home for drinking a Coke? Shit no. They could have brought it from home. Now, we did have people expelled for drinking JD when they should have been in class....

Frankly, if a corp wants to buy a shitload of computers or educational material for a school, fine by me. As long as it meets or exceeds the standards set by the local school board, I have no problem with it whatsoever, especially if it's helping a poorer school district.

Is this automatically going to give rise to a bunch of pro-MS kids? Doubtful. If anything, it will most likely lead to those kids learning computers a bit better, as they try and bypass whatever firewalls or censor-ware are on the computer to get to the pr0n. (Also, I see a lot of firesharing in this school's future. They can go ahead and combine student ID's with the RIAA's crap-tastic idea for "amnesty".)

Kierthos

altruististic ? nope, self-interest.

[maharg]

http://www.thestreet.com/comment/keyhole/774791.ht ml
Scroll down for Paul Allen reference

http://www.savephillyschools.org/edisonwatch/