[PLUG] RE: Steve Duin's column of 5/21/02

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Neil Anuskiewicz [mailto:neil at pacifier.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 8:08 AM
>To: PLUG


>Part of the purpose of schools is to prepare students for the real world.
>In the real world Microsoft OS's and software play a very important role
>in business and you are doing a disservice to kids if
>they do not get at least some exposure to Microsoft software in school. Of
>course, it would be ideal if the specific OS and software were irrelevant
>and kids just learned the principles but the reality is that many jobs do
>require specific software knowledge.
>

It has never bothered the schools in the past that they don't prepare the
students for the real world, why change now?  In fact one of the basic
tenants of a Liberal Arts education is that the individual is taught
how to teach themselves and be flexible for any new situation.

>An accountant might be required to know Quickbooks, Access, Excel, and
>Word; an editor might be required to know a specific page layout package;
>a clerk might be required to have a working knowledge of Windows and all
>the Office software packages.
>

And the corporations that need these skills can pay people to learn
them.  Why make the majority of students learn all this when they won't end
up using it?

>The point is that schools should provide a heterogeneous learning
>environment. Yes, there should be plenty of open source software. But also
>there should be some proprietary software available as well. It should be
>somewhat like what is available in the real world. Students should come
>out of school having learned on both open source and proprietary systems.
>

Or perhaps neither.

Part of the problem of setting the schools up to mimic the "real world" is
that the "real world" is so varied.  Plus that, there's a lot of professions
that people work in which might not be particularly "accepted" in an
academic environment.

For example, let's say we accept your premise that the schools should teach
students to go to work in jobs.  Now, the question is, what jobs?

If you limit the "accepted" jobs to "office environment" type jobs the problem
is that the majority of jobs in the world don't happen to be office jobs.
Surprise Surprise!

So let's say your going to be fair and not discriminate and say "all jobs"

Well, acting is a profession - are you going to argue that actors need to
know how to use an operating system?  Yeah right.  How about porno stars?
Some of those bright faced kiddies that graduate every year are going to end
up doing that for a living - there's nothing illegal about that, but are you
going to discriminate against that?

And hoo-boy, what about religion?!?!  What about all those kiddies that are
going to graduate and go on to become ministers and priests?!?  Well we can't
have any of THAT in the public schools, so strike another profession!!

Surely you can see that this premise is impossible.  We can no more demand
that students be brought up with a knowledge of operating systems than
we can demand that they be brought up with a knowledge of internal combustion
engines.  They are going to use the internal combustion engine as much
or more than the computer.

>We, as responsible citizens, should not say to the schools, "thou shalt
>use only open source" any more than we should say, "thou shalt use
>proprietary software".

But as Eric has pointed out, we are doing just that.  By starving the schools
of cash, we are "forcing" them to go to Open Source.  That's the entire
premise of Steve Duin's articles I think.

So, I guess your a Kitzhaber supporter then?  Shall we raise the state income
tax to give the schools the funding to be able to choose what OS's to run?

>The schools should strive to create the best
>computing environment that they can with the resources they have
>available, which is what I think they are doing. They have dedicated
>people like Paul Nelson and Eric Harrison working on the problem. :-)
>

Yes, but not fast enough.  The schools need a solution NOW now 3-6 years
from now.

Ted Mittelstaedt                                       tedm at toybox.placo.com
Author of:                           The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide
Book website:                          http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com