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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Yeah, well, when I was in high school, things like cell phones, digital cameras, pagers, and laptops were considered science fiction. Now get off my yard!

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

[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

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Portugal (a small country near Spain)

I love how you felt the need to clarify where Portugal is. I don't doubt that plenty of people reading that still said "huh, I wonder where that is?".

Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[khellendros1984]

(a small country near Spain)

OK, granted there are a lot of Americans on this site, and we sometimes have a reputation of being ignorant of geography and other countries, but I think most people have heard of Portugal. I mean, for goodness sake...the *pope* gave you guys half a continent...

Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[shawn(at)fsu]

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

Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[ThreeE]

...like I need someone to tell me where a South American country is.

Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[MichaelSmith]

(a small country near Spain)

OK, granted there are a lot of Americans on this site, and we sometimes have a reputation of being ignorant of geography and other countries, but I think most people have heard of Portugal. I mean, for goodness sake...the *pope* gave you guys half a continent...

From now on I will describe myself as being from Australia (a small country near New Zealand).

Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions

[LandDolphin]

"Portugal (a small country near Spain)"

This made me laugh. I would like to think that you would not need to say that, but then I remember that you probably do.

And yeah, the education is pretty bad there. Just look at how poorly people in Portugal speak Spanish, it's almost as bad as Brazil!

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

Apology

[coppro]

I would like to apologize to everyone involved for being so judgmental, even though I never actually commented on the topic or said anything to anyone. I think I jumped to conclusions too (although the "people are stupid" doctrine continues to perform well).

Re:Apology

[pm_rat_poison]

Apology accepted, Captain Needa!

Not how reporting works

[fastest fascist]

Hey hey hey! What is this? First we get a nice knee-jerk sensationalist story about an M$ drone teacher doing her utmost to keep the kids enslaved to capitalist software, and now you're ruining it all with facts and sensible dialogue between the parties involved? Where would we be if all the major news outlets started following their scaremongering and outright deceitful articles up with corrections and balanced analysis? I mean, what's next, honest reporting without hidden agendas?

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.

Well...

[girlintraining]

So this was less about Linux and more about a teenage boy being, well... a boy. Figures. It would have gone better for him if it had been some ecchi anime. First rule of high school is -- don't point out that the teacher knows less than you do. The second rule of course is, if you break the first rule do so in an epic way.

It simply illuminates a single fact.

[Lumpy]

Teachers are incredibly undereducated when it comes to technology.

Why the colleges that teach these teachers are choosing to NOT require classes in technology is beyond me.

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]

As one aside -- this story reminds me, somehow, of the guy who took donated computers and prepped them for needy kids or something, and some purported donor complained when he found out his donation was going to a "retard". My fiction senses are giving me the same vibrations.

But I can't find that computer donation one. Anyone have a link to it if you remember?

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.

First comes insinuation, then comes love...

[fahrbot-bot]

From TFA:

Karen and I have talked on the phone now for a couple of hours, here and there. We've come to understand each other more and had she said some of the things in her email that she said during our phone conversations...

Ken and Karen sittin' in a tree. K. I. S. S. I. N. G. ...

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.

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.

Jump to Conclusions Mat

[Ogive17]

Using my Jump to Conclusions Mat it has been decided that I lose a turn.. hmmph

Re:Cheaper by the dozen

[Dunbal]

I'd like to see a Windows-free educational system.

      What, and do away with the education free educational system we have now?

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.

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!

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

I *am* computer literate

[Hognoxious]

At least she didn't threaten to set the FBI on him.

Note: it seems Dopey has moved on, but his replacement's qualifications don't look too impressive...

Um... no.

[Dr. Manhattan]

Now the kids know that 1) the teacher is an idiot and 2) the teacher values obedience over correctness.

They now know that the teacher didn't know something in particular about computers and software. (I'm a geek, and I know there's plenty about how kids use computers today that I have no clue about, or only the most general notion.) It's not a surprise that she doesn't know everything - I'm pretty sure the kids were already aware that she's a human being. The question is, does she know about the topics she's teaching about and the techniques for successfully teaching them? Nothing presented so far hints that the answer is 'no'.

And as for "2", that's quite a jump, considering even the blogger parent acknowledges the kid was being 'disruptive'. If Linux (or software in general) wasn't the topic under discussion, then temporarily taking away the discs and directing attention back to the class - which is what seems to have happened - isn't "valuing obedience over correctness".

So, at most, the kids know the teacher has limited operating system knowledge, and she wants the kids to focus on the class. She did jump to conclusions based on the knowledge she had, but she addressed her message to the parent, and appears to be capable of learning when she finds out she's mistaken. That alone puts her above the 90th percentile among humans.

Re:Teachers have underwear

[jo_ham]

Last time I touched a woman's kernel I panicked.

Portugese descent in the US

[j_w_d]

When I was in high school, back before there WERE cell phones or digital cameras, we were asked to identify our "ethnicity," whereever the "ethnicity" was a quarter or more of our ancestry - as part of the initial efforts at "affirmative action" I think. Anyway the choices were "White, Black, Native American, Iberian, and Other." Since my mother was half Portugese, I put down Iberian. I was called in by an examiner and asked to explain, and I cited my twenty-five percent Portugese descent. This lead to a confusing interchange where the fellow attempted to convince me that Portugal was not "Iberian" - since the Portugese didn't speak Spanish - while I pointed that you can't get any farther west on the Iberian penninsula without getting wet. Since then whenever asked about ethnicity, I check "Other" and write in "Lusitanian." It generates an occasional baffled look, but at least I'm not subjected to irrational geography lessons.