[in a discussion whether in order to teach kids about our values (including software diversity and pluralism, free software, etc.) we must go "all the way", with free software, or can start teaching on existing proprietary systems] Note that we can teach the free software "philosophy", of diversity, freedom and knowledge, even if we're forced to deal with Windows-installed computers (iik!) at the first stage. If we insist, Linux on UMSDOS partitions can be used, or we can install some free software on Windows. But it is also possible to teach more general issues, like an introduction to programming (C, or whatever.), or an introduction to the Internet, and so on, in a completely different state of mind than these things are usually taught - without having to use Linux. What do I mean? Imagine, for example, a kid being taught right from the start that Windows is only one of the possible OSs, told about other existing OSs and even shown a demonstration of one on the teacher's laptop. Or imagine teaching creating web pages, and emphasizing that web-pages should be accessible to people with various browsers, various disabilities, and so on, explaining about open standards and why these are useful. A Windows lackey would never teach that way... People from this list could. -- Nadav Har'El | Friday, Sep 13 2002, 7 Tishri 5763 > You are wasting your time. Israeli K12 has no use for Linux. Been there, > done that. If the kids don't have the same OS at school as at home then > forget it. If it doesn't run MS Word, then forget it. > Regards, I admit it's been a few years since I went to school (I left highschool 11 years ago), but my experience was completely different from what you describe. In elementary school (6th grade) we learned arithmetic on a computer for one hour a week; That computer had some unknown OS that we had no access to - we only used the arithmetic-teaching software itself. In 10th grade we learned BASIC (!) on antique Apple II machines (!!) - both the language and the machine and its OS were almost obsolete at the time, and NOBODY had these at home. In fact, most of the kids probably did not have a computer at home at all! But the ideas we learned were (or at least supposed to be) universal. In 11th grade we learned Turbo Pascal on DOS. Windows (3.1) was already available, and common, at the time, but it wasn't considered "pchitut kavod" not to study on it. We never studied MS-Word, or any word processor, when I was at school. Kids were free to use it (or whatever word processor they had) to write schoolwork, but nobody tried to force a specific set of tools on them. -- Nadav Har'El | Thursday, Jan 2 2003, 28 Tevet 5763 > I want my kids to be ready to start their work immediately in any > normal office. Why should I to sacrifice competitive strength of my kids > to OS wars? Have you ever seen anyone who learned Linux and was unable to "work immediately in a normal office"? This simply does not happen. Anybody who has spent time using Linux, even if only the command line, learns most of the skills he or she will need for using Windows. He or she learns to use the keyboard the peripherals (no, that thing with a hole that pops out of the computer is NOT a cup holder!), concepts like "files", "directories", "programs", etc. If some specific MS-Word skills are missing this person will not be afraid to learn them in one day when her or she needs them. -- Nadav Har'El | Thursday, Jan 2 2003, 28 Tevet 5763 If we're not talking about tutoring other subjects, but rather learning computers per se, I argued previously that the Linux experience will be just as good (or more, obviously :)) as Windows experience. In any case, when the kids need to use that experience in the work place - perhaps 5 or 10 years after they studied it - the specific Windows techniques they learned will have become obsolete. I remember very clearly a discussion I had with a friend 11 years ago when I was in the 11th grade. We were studying then Turbo Pascal on DOS and also using Windows (3.1) at school, and I told him about C and Unix, which were virtually unknown (especially in Israel) at the time. He said that Turbo Pascal was the wave of the future, and C was a relic of the past (I admitted to him that C had been invented 15 years earlier). I claimed this was wrong, that C and Unix were technically superior and they shall inherit the earth :) I think the more years that have passed, the closer my claim gets to reality. Unix (in the form of Linux) is getting more and more common, and C (and C++) have become the lingua franca of the entire industry, and Turbo Pascal is barely remembered (in the form of Delphi). This friend of mine, on the other hand, can now do absolutely nothing with his knowledge of Turbo Pascal and DOS, and yelling "But these were the most common software when I studied!" will not help him one iota. -- Nadav Har'El | Thursday, Jan 2 2003, 28 Tevet 5763