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School District To Parents — Buy Office 2007
WS Nick writes "Batavia school district in Illinois is recommending that parents of high school students upgrade their home computers to Microsoft Office 2007. Why not use one of the free alternatives and relieve parents of some of the financial burden they face to buy all the stuff for their children the school requires?" A comment from a reader points out how easy it is to interoperate with Office 2007 from earlier versions.
Funny how OSS is always about 'choice' until someone has the gall to choose something other than it. Then we get dramatic articles about how, "the money is better spent on free software." Guess what? Other people have different needs than you! And people flock to what they know! How shocking! Now let's all post elitist comments about how no one takes the time to search out free alternatives to their office suite. Certainly people SHOULD be interested in this sort of thing, because *I* am! And don't people ever even THINK about the superior morality of free software?!
Seriously now, if you wish to persist in the same line of thinking regardless of how ridiculous it is (usually this is the case when you agree with it), then I will allow that. Allow me to say that your concern is better spent on more important matters, such as child labor, or other, *real* injustices in the world. But I get the feeling people rally behind these sorts of "us vs. them" exercises because they can feel like they're a part of something, while sitting at their computer. There are real problems out there in the world. People's choice in software ranks pretty low in terms of importance.
School is most importantly about learning to learn.
Not really, your retention level is low. They don't really teach critical thinking until college/university. Before then it's rote memorization unless you were fortunate to find a "good" teacher. Grade school, middle school, and high school is much more about keeping your kids busy while you worked and giving the kids a good early dose of propaganda and start them on a career path. They may learn stuff too but chances are it wasn't taught in a way they'd really retain much.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Yeah, you must be using OO since it is pretty obvious you don't have a good spell check - it is ELOQUENT not Equolent! Me thinks you need to move to Batavia and buy MS Office 2007.