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Application-Centricity in Our Schools?
bccomm asks: "Here on Slashdot, we continually hear about new successes in bringing free software closer to the desktop. What about schools? I am a student and was once asked to redo an entire presentation because I had used Prosper instead of PowerPoint. The explanation I received from him was 'the curriculum says I'm supposed to teach Word, PowerPoint, etc, not word processing and presentations.' How is this for irony: presentation has to be about volunteer work/hobbies, and I chose to show that my computer runs a daily NetBSD snapshot. I think it just lost some effectiveness. Is anyone else bothered by this?"
I, too, have run into this type of problem, although the explanation is usually a compatability issue. "How can I get a copy of this on my computer when all the school supplies is PowerPoint." With so many students it's hard for teachers (especially in subjects outside of technology) to 1) have heard about OpenSource technology 2) have the time install OpenSource projects.
Also, many of my teachers like to distribute the student's presentations later online so that all of the students can view them again, it's also nice for students who were absent. Conflicting formats make this difficult.
You can look at it as indoctrination if you wish, however, I do see a lot of convenience issues that go along with all of this.
The class is a state requirement (South Dakota of all places)
Remember WordPerfect? Actually when I was a kid it was WordStar, but I never used it, since we had Apple 2s in school, and Atari (400) at home. Whatever word processer those systems used is what I used, when I wasn't useing pen and paper.
By the time I reached high school they were braging about the computer labs which taught WordPerfect 5.1, which was exactly what industry was using.
Then came college and MSWord was on all the non-unix systems. I used that when I had to. More often I used Emacs, or when I needed something more complex FrameMaker was on the Unix systems, and I generally spent most of my time writing programs for Unix so I was on them anyway.
Then I got into the real world and I only had an X terminal on my desk so it was FrameMaker. Eventially they switched us to Outlook for email, but it was done via Citrix, and Word was avaiable there. There I mostly used either whatever was built into the tools we used (a code generation package) or ed. (yes ed, when you telnet to a system without curses you use ed)
At the next job it was gvim on windows. I had MSWord though, and sometimes had to use it. Standard was to export everything to rtf before distribution, though I'm the onlyone who actually did that. Likely as close to the real world as I've ever been.
Today I'm unemployed (though I might be called back to the last job if they find more money). I don't have MSWord, and see no reason to buy it. I have kWord and it works great. I have vi, and it works fine. I also have emacs, though I haven't touched it in a long time, and OpenOffice which I just installed cause some potential employer sent me a word document.
In short, they will make you learn something. Learn it because that is what you have to work with. In the real world exactly what you use will change, so be ready to learn new things.
At my university (ewu.edu) every student is required to take a computer "literacy" (more like computer penmanship, I think) test to prove that they are computer literate.
Not only is this test MS product specific (PeePee, MS Worse, Eksell...) it is specific to the point where questions ask the student to do tasks using specific mouse clicks (or so I'm told - I'm doing my best to avoid the whole area myself) and the exam software won't let you do it in any other way.
And CS students can't graduate till they pass it. They can be expert coders in C, know low level OS internals, whatever - but if they can't get the right sequence of mouse clicks in MS worse to change a font (or whatever) they won't get that piece of paper.