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The Argument For F/OSS In Schools

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the teaching-freedom dept.

pfaffman sends us word of a two-part article in LinuxInsider that lays out to an audience of non-tech educators a cogent argument for using F/OSS in schools. The piece was written by a University of Tennessee professor for the education journal TechTrends. It makes the case that proprietary software is inconvenient and that when schools choose to use proprietary products they spend their constituents' money. The article won't contain a whole lot of surprises for Linux initiates (save perhaps some software recommendations for educational use), but it's interesting to see these ideas presented so clearly to a wider, and influential, audience."

1 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. What do you want to teach your children? by wall0159 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    It depends on priorities. If you want to teach kids to be Mc-Happy consumers of software that was written elsewhere, then proprietary software is the way to go.
    Alternatively, if you want to empower them to affect change themselves, then they need the tools to do this.

    Proprietary software just can't compete when one starts thinking about the freedom to learn.