-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 04/07/2016 12:11 PM, Paul Boddie wrote: > On Thursday 7. April 2016 18.29.49 Timothy Pearson wrote: >> On 04/07/2016 06:14 AM, Guido Arnold wrote: >>> Hello, >>> >>> I produced a summary of a longer debate on the German discussion >>> list which addressed a lot of aspects that may be relevant to other >>> European countries. Please comment here on this list or per PM. The >>> text below is also available as a blog post [0]. >> >> As distasteful as I find this I think I can see why it is being done. >> No government wants people coming out of its educational system that are >> unfamiliar with the "basic" technology in use around the world. > > This argument about what was called "industry standard" software has been > around since the 1980s. In the UK, with a battle between proprietary > platforms > - the one dominant in education and the one becoming dominant in workplaces - > the argument went that children should learn the thing being used in > workplaces in order to train them for work. > > (One can argue whether schools are supposed to be training rather than > educating, but that's another debate. Given that computing was also meant to > be applied to most subjects and be used as an educational tool, it was also > questionable that one particular application - office technology - should > have > been prioritised, but that's also another debate.) > > The flaw in this familiarity argument was that anyone learning the currently- > popular workplace software was always going to be behind the curve: by the > time they had left school, even if they went straight into work and not > entered further/higher education first, the chances were that they would be > using different products. In fact, the flaw was compounded by the fact that > the "education" platform in question had superior products in certain > respects > that more closely resembled the "industry" platform's products of a few years > later than the "industry" platform's own products did when the children were > being made to use them. > > (I saw this for myself since I used the "education" platform at home, whereas > the school's computers were mostly running stuff using DOS, and even the few > Windows computers were running primitive versions of the products people take > for granted today. Indeed, some aspects of Office are probably still > deficient > in comparison to the software I was using at the end of the 1980s and the > start of the 1990s.) > > And to keep up with "industry standards", sustained expenditure is needed: > rather than there being a change in favoured products, it is now more likely > that everyone is on the version upgrade treadmill. Whether schools should > have > the same budgetary priorities as businesses is another discussion to be had.
Yeah, I'm aware of this and largely agree. However, governments generally turn a blind eye to their own slow pace, leading to laughable situations such as the DOS one you mentioned. It's a lot easier for schools to say "well, we tried" than to say "no, we're not going to teach that at all". Also, one aspect I did not bring up is that by standardizing the platform you can to a large extent standardize the curriculum built on that platform. This is very attractive at the scale of most educational institutions; by forcing the exact same tools for all students, it eliminates another potential cause for one student to be performing better or worse than another. Never mind that a mandatory upgrade from Microsoft would flush all that down the drain... > Personally, I welcome the single-board computer trend because it disrupts > that > upgrade treadmill, usually introduces Free Software, shows people that you > can > do the same with much less (and at much less cost), and allows for a broader > range of experiences that would probably serve everybody better than a rigid > training programme for software the children may never use again (especially > in light of changes in the way computing is done, thanks to a wider range of > devices being used than was traditionally the case). 100% agreed. This is partially why I suggested making exposure to and work with SBCs mandatory for students on technical tracks -- they gain exposure to the type of technology they will be working with in the IoT, and at the same time they realise only a small portion of the computers in existence run Microsoft products. - -- Timothy Pearson Raptor Engineering +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line) +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard) http://www.raptorengineeringinc.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJXBpgFAAoJEK+E3vEXDOFbCTIIAJcoMy2YGVibt5b+nE6XboKz YiYtEQcWoBcygp6twgdWZk1/sVOgcQFlMJ0LYWxdi5EryF6M3mTBRcRsYWaIUyNE 9AJW2VZP3X4Vk7EjxkG8rZoH+S0oU1wVvRJFD+tTPNijfXd3lqNzUkOIneeBXLtW 5WiRhQQ3S2fhCfiB+1uCnWZ7yKog9JpTu141KImq1D2M9FSjhwLSw/0vMMDuW0yI aMvfoVOuc3RIVPPI9eYmPldO5wjOYG5JJpUgQBcIj1Io8ypt+rLWWelHsK3tTJ1X LC66lQPuQyDW8y1a0XbjNfFMrTM4YYllS1hFtUxmbOTxIEMgvpt227h6X1GGTXk= =nv65 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
