Slashdot Mirror
Teachers Need an Open Source Education
palegray.net writes "Teachers are sorely in need of an education in what open source software is, what it isn't, and how it can benefit their students. A recent news story at the Reg discussed the case of a Texas teacher who accused those distributing Linux to students of committing criminal acts. A HeliOS blog entry exposes a 'higher education' culture of apathy, lies, and fear of open source software. Things have got to improve, and that improvement needs to start with misguided teachers getting their facts straight."
An example of this scenario: Earlier this year, the principal of my school got on the intercom in order to make a very important announcement: that Firefox was "some sort of proxy" and that any students caught using it or installing it on any school computer would be immediately suspended for a one-week period. That had to have been the most WTF thing I've heard from the administration on opensource software.
Call me at home and you're likely to discover your phone number has been mistaken for a free sex number.
Um, tell me more about these 'free sex numbers'. I'd, er, also like to give these out instead of my home number..
see, that's kinda the reaction i was going for. i wish i'd gone to your school; my administration mostly just squirmed and looked at me uncomfortably. ;-)
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
I felt lazy and wanted some free credit, so I took an intro to Linux class. I thought it would be a breeze considering I've been using Linux for so long. I had no idea how many things [according to the school] I apparently do wrong. Rather than an obnoxiously long list, here's my absolute favorite:
"I want you to get into the habit of logging in as root"
):
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
At the bottom of the