It's so sad that people who teach children can be so ignorant. And even more so that they take it as far as Karen, a teacher with the AISD (which Google says is the Austin Independent School District, YMMV) who discovered, to her horror, one of her students demonstrating Linux to his classmates and handing out disks of HeliOS.
Ever the quick one, Karen confiscated all those illegal Linux disks and gave the student detention. It could have stopped there, but she went even further by sending an almost laughably vacuous letter full of insanity and stupidity to Ken Starks who runs the HeliOS project which, by the way, uses Free and Open Source Software to bring technology to kids who otherwise would not have the advantages that other kids have in the world. The project gives them a chance to compete now in the academic space, and in the future when they go to seek employment and is quite a noble project.
Karen says "...observed one of my students with a group of other children gathered around his laptop. Upon looking at his computer, I saw he was giving a demonstration of some sort. The student was showing the ability of the laptop and handing out Linux disks. After confiscating the disks I called a confrence with the student and that is how I came to discover you and your organization. Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows. Mr. Starks, I along with many others tried Linux during college and I assure you, the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods. I admire your attempts in getting computers in the hands of disadvantaged people but putting linux on these machines is holding our kids back.
This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all. I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older verison of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them..."
The bold items are for emphasis and are, to me, the funniest/saddest part of Karen's whole diatribe. First of all, I believe there are several very large corporate entities (one of which employs me) who would have a slight difference of opinion on whether Linux is free (as in beer and as in freedom).
I think there are quite a few children who have benefited from the One Laptop Per Child, HeliOS and K12LTSP projects who may have something to say about Linux holding them back.
Sadly, many network and server operators would also have a different opinion about Windows running on "virtually every computer", and even more so from those poor sods who wanted to run Vista, only to find that their beefy XP machines had to be scrapped or severely upgraded to even meet the BASIC Vista requirements.
I hope that Karen is NOT representative of teachers in general, and AISD teachers in particular. As a teacher myself, one who, as it happens, gets paid to TEACH LINUX, I find her whole letter to be laughable, silly, alamrist, and really quite ignorant.
But the worst part is that this kind of ignorance is EXACTLY why Windows is so widespread. In the Ham Radio world, we have two kinds of people. Those who understand radios, and those who are "appliance operators". While the advent of Windows 9x brought about a real revolution in home and personal computing (much the same way DOS and Windows 3.x did), it also brought about the rise of the computer as appliance, and the appliance operators.
Anyone can tell you that their stove cooks food. Not so many can tell you HOW the stove heats. That is the essence of the Appliance Operator. Before Windows 9x, people who used computers, even those at home, actually KNEW something about computers. After Windows 9x, anyone could use one, and following that, very few of those actually know how or why computers even work.
THIS is one of the biggest struggles Linux advocates, and F/OSS advocates have to overcome. The model of Free and Open Source Software is a good one, and works well. We just have to hammer it into the thick skulls of the Appliance Operators of the world that there IS A BETTER WAY, or at the very least, a far more cost effective way.
Das Aggregator!