Re: [edu-eu] Re: [edu-team] education activity flyer / arguments +information

[Alessandro Rubini]

> One argument I see is that schools should not only teach technical
> skills but also social skills. In traditional areas this can mean
> something like "be nice to each other", playing together, work together
> in teams, help each other, waste separation, etc.

While that's true, I think this has very little appeal nowadays.  We
must remember that everybody is used to depend from technology.

_every_ technological device people know and use has serious bugs,
starting from web sites down to cell phones.  People is used to adapt
to the device, everybody learnt to be a passive user: technology is
subjugating us and people don't even complain any more.  Nobody
requests a fix or expects stuff to be simply useable; they just learn
their way through braindead interfaces and unintelligible error
messages without complaining.

In this environment, if you talk about social aspects of technology
and you'll get just ignored as someone with strange ideals and no
connection to the real world.

> Free Software encourage and allow pupils to do this things in areas
> where computers are involved while non-Free Software teach them not to
> help each other ("because sharing software is bad"), don't be nice to
> each other (because you can't give a copy to your friends), don't work
> together in a team, etc.

The first point is true and must be raised: students must be able to
bring home the tools they use to study.  Until we have no-cost
self-expire copies of office and autocad for students, we can bring
this to attention. I don't think it will take much to have such drm in
place to allow all students to bring home the tools at no cost, but
meanwhile...

The second ("give a copy to your friends") sounds like sweet utopia,
it doesn't stick -- it may even play against the speaker, who
immediately gets depicted as a naive leftist in the mind of the
listener -- sorry I lack the proper words in English to express this.

The third point ("work in team") doesn't work.  When two families in
the class of my son had no computer and the homework involved writing
something in word, the reply of the teacher was "just work in team
with someone who has it".  Needless to say, yhey both bought an
expensive laptop with win/office just for that -- who wouldn't do
that for the education of her children?

> Another argument is that Free Software allows real learning. Pupils can
> discover how it works and what it does internally. They can dive into
> the software as deep as they want, no artificial borders.

Yes. And no. Again, this sounds like wishful thinking. And it really
is.  The amount of pupils who would scratch the surface is (nowadays)
a negligible minority.  Your party in the discussion knows that, and
you know as well.

Please note that I do use the same arguments, but I know they are not
working.  In this case, however, I strees the fact that the _few_ who
_would_ be interested in knowing better _could_ do that.  It's a
theoretical event, but we don't want to deny that possibility.
Frankly, I myself get mad in trying to tame modern distributions to do
the right thing for me.  Would someone really open the source code
of openoffice or firefox?  I have given up trying to make smaller
fonts in firefox menus, after hours spent trying to. Do you really
think pupils will do?

We have two points against this theoretical "learing how to works
internally": (a) programs are too complex, and (b) there is no social
pressure in knowing better (like, say, 20 years ago).  While we can
hope to change (b) and over time getting back awareness that computers
are there to be controlled (and not to control), for (a) it's worse
and worse.

> I like to compare the use of non-Free Software in the IT course with a
> math course where you don't learn math skills but only how to use a
> electronic calculator.

Very true, but there's an important difference: math is commonly
percieved as science and culture, while the PC is commonly perceived
as a black box that dictates the one and true way to manage one's own
information flow.  I don't think the comparison will have any effect
on the average listener -- even the most well-intentioned.


Sorry for what sound like harsh words, they are not against anybody
in particular (if any, against myself and the way I have been
uninfluential in bringing people to FS in education).

/alessandro