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

Where is any verification of any of this?

[ergo98]

This guy is getting a tonne of publicity for this (and apparently he is well versed in the art of getting attention for his projects in this manner), based upon nothing verifiable.

Maybe I'm just too internet shellshocked to believe anything any more, but it reeks of being a complete fabrication, in an era when Lying on the Internet is considered perfectly okay so long as you know to say "Ha ha! All a joke!" if caught, or perhaps the classic "This was just an example composite of various situations!".

I could be entirely wrong, but it all seems like a terribly thin ruse to me, with a ridiculous, one dimensional strawman (or women in this case) put up and then viciously knocked down. On the resulting torrent of perhaps gullible internet vigilantes, a hastily written cool-down appeared to, perhaps, try to divert them before they uncover the fiction of this (if it is fiction. My bets are that it is, but that's an uninformed opinion).

Then again, maybe I'm just too skeptical.

Re:Where is any verification of any of this?

[ergo98]

Found it, and it's the SAME GUY. Honestly when the correlation clicked in my mind I had no idea at all that it was the same guy, but somehow the hashing algorithm was colliding the two articles.

http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2008/09/wasted-on-idiot.html

Wow.

Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[mcgrew]

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?

Windows != "standards". And, by the time a 7th grader enters the work force, Windows will be less like the XP he's using now than Mandriva is like XP.

There are, of course, businesses that need some sort of proprietary, Windows-only software (e.g., Photoshop) but a spreadsheet is a spreadsheet, a word processer is a word processer. Each new version of Microsoft Word is less like the previous version or Word than that previous version was to Star Office.

Microsoft software in schools is a pitiful, ignorant waste of my tax money.

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

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.

When I was in high school things like cell phones, cameras, pagers, and especially laptops were considered contraband!

That was the case when my daughters were in high school (my oldest is 23), and I and others fought that policy tooth and nail.

When I was in high school a computer needed a whole building, and it had less computing power than a Hallmark greeting card. But I'll get off your lawn anyway, Grandpa.

Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[theaveng]

Yes I don't think the blogger was being too harsh (remember the teacher threatened to SUE him - an attack without merit), especially when you read what OTHER teachers have posted. Like this one:

I am a school teacher in the Austin Independent School District and while I don't know any "Karen", I am intimately familiar with the rhetoric and attitude. The author here is uncomfortably close to knowing what he's talking about when he speaks of the NEA. We are "encouraged strongly" to discourage the use of anything other than Microsoft products in the school district and between the Tech folks fearing for their jobs and the ignorance of all the "Karens" I deal with daily, it's a wonder the boy wasn't publicly flogged.

I have been trying to get our school district to use Linux for 3 years and I've been told that I am to desist with this quest if I want to keep my job.

Those who questioned the email's authenticity owe him(?) an apology. Of course as I peruse the comments of the sort, I note with a wry smile that you don't have the courage to sign your name to it.

Cowardice is easy. I wish this author well.

        Tim Daily