Followup To "When Teachers Are Obstacles To Linux"

An couple of anonymous readers wrote in to let us know about a followup to last Wednesday's story of the teacher who didn't believe in free software. The Linux advocate who posted the original piece has cooled off and graciously apologized for going off half-cocked (even though the teacher had done the same), and provided a little more background which, while not excusing the teacher's ignorance, does make her actions somewhat more understandable. Ken Starks has talked with the teacher, who has received a crash education in technology over the last few days — Starks is installing Linux on her computer tomorrow. He retracts his insinuations about Microsoft money and the NEA. All in all he demonstrates what a little honest communication can do, a lesson that all of us who advocate for free software can take to heart. "The student did get his Linux disks back after the class. The lad was being disruptive, but that wasn't mentioned. Neither was the obvious fact that when she saw a gaggle of giggling 8th grade boys gathered around a laptop, the last thing she expected to see on that screen was a spinning cube. She didn't know what was on those disks he was handing out. It could have been porn, viral .exe's...any number of things for all she knew. When she heard that an adult had given him some of the disks to hand out, her spidey-senses started tingling. Coupled with the fact that she truly was ignorant of honest-to-goodness free software, and you have some fairly impressive conclusion-jumping. In a couple of ways, I am guilty of it too."

Comments

Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[Ethanol-fueled]

There was a lot of unnecessary foaming at the mouth from both sides about this.

Though the teacher grossly over-reacted, why don't some people understand that, especially at the lower grade levels, teachers have to teach to the standards? Sure, in a perfect world kids would have exposure to a variety of platforms in school but teachers have to see to it that their students stay on topic using the class materials, otherwise too many disctactions will arise and that'll make things harder for the teacher to do their job. One shouldn't show up to a guitar class handing out trumpets to everybody and then expect the teacher to teach to both the guitar and the trumpet. As I said above, teachers usually aren't censoring for its own sake, they just don't want distractions.

And call me old-fashioned(and I'm mid-20's), but what the hell is a middle-schooler doing with a laptop at school and why would it have been okay for the student to break out a laptop in class if it were running windows? When I was in high school things like cell phones, cameras, pagers, and especially laptops were considered contraband!

Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[icebraining]

Here in Portugal (a small country near Spain) the government is giving cheap laptops to all children from 7 to 18 years, for them to use during classes and work at home. On the other hand we have one of the worst education levels of Europe. Yes, something is wrong here.

Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[shawn(at)fsu]

Windows-only software (e.g., Photoshop)
ahem... Photoshop is NOT windows only.

Been there, done that...

[msimm]

It was called slashback. They posted (often interesting) updates and/or corrections to previous articles.

....now we have Idle