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

[mcgrew]

If the function of schools is to prepare students to survive in today's world

It's not. It's to prepare them to survive in tomorrow's world.

Open Office is nothing like Office 2007 for example

And Office 2007 is nothing like Office 2000.

I personally don't believe schools should be used as a place to advocate social change

I agree, and it irks me that they are. But my arguments for schools using FOSS are not societal, but monetary and practical. KDE is as much like whatever Windows will be like in ten years as XP is.

Our schools are in terrible shape and they need to pay teachers more (and administrators less).