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

Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[bruce_the_loon]

Don't rant first and ask questions later.

Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[Com2Kid]

You think this is a bad thing?

You should have seen the back of my CS classes. A good 50% of the class was playing World of Warcraft on any given day.

Seriously though, Laptops are just one more source of distractions. Could PCs potentially be used to help improve education? Perhaps. Applications such as OneNote are great, I went an entire year without using any paper at all (I emailed my HW in), but I had plenty of trouble paying attention in class and staying off of /.

The current education system in America is by no means perfect, but throwing a bunch of laptops into the mix is not going to help things any. Teachers will still assign busy work, students will still pick on each other, and the majority parents will still be too lazy/busy to ensure their children complete homework assignments.

Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[Forrest Kyle]

"But your analogy is completely flawed. More accurate is the kid is showing up in a guitar class with a Fender and the teacher is complaining that everyone else has Gibsons."

This is straight up terrible analogy. As a guitar player, I can play a Fender and then switch to a Gibson without having to learn anything or adjust my playing style in anyway.

When I switched to Linux, I had to read a huge book and several hundred man pages along the way, and it was a big paradigm shift in how I managed a computer system.

If we are determined to use musical instruments as an analogy, the best way to describe it would be switching from a finger-picking classical style, to a standard rock guitar style of playing. Same instrument, totally different paradigm of operation.

Pretending that switching to Linux does not require a huge investment of time, interest, and effort is not going to help it penetrate the traditional desktop market. Not everyone who doesn't use Linux is ignorant; they're probably just too busy being productive.

Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[severoon]

Two people, the school teacher and the blogger, spend their days as educators. One educating people on the benefits of certain technology, the other kids. For what it's worth, I found the teacher's email to certainly be more threatening than it needed to be given the amount of research she'd done into the matter. And the blogger's response had a bit of bite to it, but it was through much of it making real, valid, informational points. Maybe he shouldn't have indicted all teachers...but it's certainly true that this teacher's attitude isn't exactly unique in the industry either.

What's disturbing to me here is not that the teacher wasn't aware of free software or not up on technology...rather, it's her overreaction to the kids. Everything about the way she handled that situation was wrong, wrong, wrong. Did she put the class back on track and then ask the kid in a non-accusatory way to explain what was going on?

No, she flew off the handle, smacked down on the kid, fired off a threatening, uninformed email...pretty much an out-of-proportion, emotional reaction to a kid being a bit disruptive in the classroom—and being disruptive because he was actually excited about learning something at that.

What's even more troubling is that, even after the fact, she's crying and clearly sorry, but I didn't get a strong indication that she even knew exactly what it was she did wrong so she can fix it and respond more rationally next time. It's hard to say from the little bit of the blogger's follow-up post...but we really, really need our teachers to be adults in the room. The way she initially reacted was more like how kids treat each other.

Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[severoon]

No.

Up through middle school, which is the age of kids we're talking about, children's brains have not yet fully formed a strong self-identity, meaning that they are still being socialized. If an authority figure exhibits certain behavior, children at this stage and younger will respond to it and tend to reflect it. Which means all of your teacher friends, by refusing to give an inch are teaching their children that uncompromising behavior is reasonable...in effect, telling them to take a light year when the opportunity presents itself. That's what you call one o' them there "self-fulfilling prophecy" type things.

The fact that your friends are teachers gives them no more authority to speak on this topic than the teacher that instigated this mess, particularly since they apparently agree with the way she handled it, and I think we all agree that she handled it poorly. The very point I was trying to make is that it's distressing to me, and ought to be to you, is that I couldn't see any evidence that this teacher who's in charge of kids all day didn't seem to have any inkling of exactly how she should've handled it (though it is also equally clear to me that even she would most likely agree she dropped the ball).

The fact that you know teachers doesn't give you any special authority on the topic. I myself claim no special authority either...so with a total absence of special authority to go around, why don't we all just agree to discuss it as equals and assess the points on their own merits and reasonableness. Appeal to authority is always a fallacy, but it's particularly absurd when there is no actual authority present, wouldn't you agree?

Reminds me of the old saying

[cabjf]

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." If either side had done some research or better communicating before yelling on the internet, this would have been a non-issue.

Re:Reminds me of the old saying

[Just Some Guy]

If either side had done some research or better communicating before yelling on the internet, this would have been a non-issue.

In fairness to Starks, if I'd been threatened with having the cops called on me for something perfectly innocuous, I might've responded as he did. In hindsight it wasn't that big of a deal, but her opening salvo was fired from an elephant gun.

Re:Reminds me of the old saying

[Hatta]

Not really. The teacher still acted out of ignorance and fear. She deserved a good brow beating. Maybe next time she'll recognize her ignorance, and listen to her students instead of jumping to conclusions. Nothing damages the relationship between teacher and student than this kind of arbitrary and capricious exercise of power. Now the kids know that 1) the teacher is an idiot and 2) the teacher values obedience over correctness. This kind of behavior is absolutely not conducive to a constructive learning environment, and I hope that she's ashamed of herself.

A Happy ending

[jmorris42]

Yes the teacher brought the storm on herself. Not by being ignorant of open source but by being rude. This is a good object lesson about email more than anything else.

Helios was perfectly in the right to flame back, especially since he was pretty polite about it considering the pretty nasty slander the teacher was throwing at him. And even being ticked off he protected her identity so she won't have to suffer the consequences of her bad manners. Even better, after talking it over with her he appears to have turned the situation into a win. So high praise for him and since she seems to have learned something positive out of the mess lets give her a break now.

thanks, internet!

[Lord Ender]

It was obvious to the intelligent person that this entire situation was made of fail from the get-go. Any time spent analyzing this will likely just make us all dumber. Quit giving it press.

Culture of Fear

[Adrian Lopez]

When she heard that an adult had given him some of the disks to hand out, her spidey-senses started tingling.

What a shame that the first thing some people do when told about adults interacting with children is to think of something perverse.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The Linux PR/Education Department Needs Volunteers

[postbigbang]

You can find a million things online as reference materials, but it's difficult to talk to civilians about why FOSS is a good idea, and how it's put together. People kind of glaze over when you tell them the differences. Often, they don't care and are suspect of anything truly free.

Centralized advocacy could certainly be helpful, as Linux is by its nature, evolutionary and rife with useful anarchy. Still, protagonists need to do some work to evolve the public image of Linux/GNU, FOSS, and why. Half-cocked replies are what turns people off, as they're insecure enough already about computing.

Apology takes strength.

[chaim79]

This guy is really showing some strength and intelligence, he has made a public apology, and is working with the teacher instead of continuing the rant. The teacher has gotten a serious shaking up from the OSS community (through the blog) and he is doing his best to make a win of this situation.

This could have very easily degenerated into some serious verbal warfare, lawsuits, etc.

While I was interested by the first blog post and kept watch for followup, this second post makes me want to really keep an eye on this guy, actions like this apology are usually a sign of someone that should be listened to.

nice to see

[nomadic]

Well this blog posting was definitely a lot more admirable than the last one, and I'm glad he also apologized for the anti-union tirade. In regards to specific passages:

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.

This is a good point, and I actually think a reasonable teacher may have reasonably been worried about what was going on. Even one who actually had a basic tech background.

Karen isn't alone in her ignorance. I have sat in a PhD's office...a PhD that happened to be a principal of a school. She told me that according to her "tech staff", it was illegal to remove Microsoft Windows from their school computers. So who is ignorant here? The "tech staffer" afraid of losing his MCSE position or the Dr. of Education that didn't bother to check into such a statement. Ignorance isn't the sole possession of this particular school teacher.

Actually it's quite plausible that tech staff isn't allowed to do this. Maybe the district has a contract with Microsoft, or the school regulations prohibit changing a standard district-wide setup.

Now to the meat of the matter. Many, many of you have pushed for the identification of this teacher.

How about you reveal the identification of THESE people? I have some things I want to say to them...

Adobe? Google Earth? iTunes???? Free???!!!

[zojas]

in the blog, he provides a list of some of the software that the school makes available. but what he actually says is "Other open source software on both images include audacity and lame, and other Free Software such as Google Earth, iTunes, Adobe and many plug-ins."

Great, except for the part that Adobe, Google Earth, and most especially iTunes, are anything BUT Free Software. If he had said "free software" it would have been ok, but he deliberately went out of his way to capitalize it like the Free Software Foundation does. I'm pretty sure Adobe has produced absolutely no Free Software (Free as in Freedom, not free as in purchase price). and iTunes is certainly not Free; source is not available, and all the metadata for the iTunes library is locked in a proprietary, binary blob.

it's just shocking that this big-time supposed Free Software advocate doesn't even know how to spell free software!

The Teacher's Identity

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Ken makes a big deal about not wanting to name the teacher.
But each successive blog post gives away more identifiable details.
With just the information he has posted, plus the AISD's own website, it is now possible to narrow her identity down to one of 2 people.

I'm sure that's not news to anyone already determined to figure out her identity, but it ought to be a warning to anyone else trying to both talk about a person and keep their identity secret on the web. It is just a real-life puzzle of connect the dots where seemingly tangential information can be enough to put the entire picture together.

Re:Cheaper by the dozen

[corsec67]

NO!

They should be taught how to use a "word processor", be it OpenOffice.org Writer, Word, WordPerfect, Write, LaTeX (as LyX), HTML, etc. Have each be taught for a week, so they can see that even though things look different, each application has a way of doing the same thing.

Or are you saying that Word doesn't change every few years (like adding in a "Ribbon" instead of menus), so they should be taught a version of Word that is going to be out of date by the time they graduate?

Teach them how to *use* a computer, not how to repeat a specific set of steps, so they don't freeze up when things change slightly.

Re:Cheaper by the dozen

[LandruBek]

I don't want schools to make the same mistake . . . teaching kids how to use Pascal, Fortran, or COBOL on Apple IIe's . . .

Yeah, all that I got out of learning Pascal on an Apple ][ was that it helped me get ready to study computer science in college, which has only led me to . . . gainful employment. </sarcasm>

Seriously, I would much rather see them "waste" time teaching programming than have them spend classroom time teaching kids how to use GUI software, which most of them can pick up on their own.

Thanks

[Auraiken]

Sorry to hijack your thread, but I'd like to say that this is what I'd like to see more of on /. We have too many stories indicating that things are one way only to be found otherwise and not corrected on at all. There were a lot of people in other stories lately who've been saying how wrong mass media is in how they 'report' on stories that are just there to make money. IT also shows that the open source community needs to stop attacking the ignorant people... I mean they might be stupid and annoying sometimes but we aren't going to get anywhere unless we educate them. /rant