Re: [Fsfe-uk] Linux for Kids Briefing

[Ian Lynch]

On Fri, 2004-10-01 at 10:24, Alex Hudson wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-10-01 at 10:21 +0100, Ian Lynch wrote:
> > On Fri, 2004-10-01 at 09:48, PFJ wrote:
> > > If the lock was fundamentally broken so that if someone (say) turns the
> > > handle the wrong way (which effectively is all that my son did), then a
> > > parent would have the right to say "you brought in on yourself as it's
> > > well known that that type of lock is rubbish and how is a 6 year to know
> > > the problem".
> > 
> > Better to point it out though as a possible problem than actually
> > trashing the office to prove it ;-)
> 
> We are talking about kids here, though :)

Do you think that kids would be excused trashing the heads's office just
because they were kids? I think expectations of standards of behaviour
in school must have improved a lot since OFSTED ;-)

> I have vivid memories of the "antics" of individuals - not even those
> who you might think are "hackers" - during secondary school (I.T. at
> primary school - for me - consisted of limited time on BBC Bs :), on
> both DOS and Windows networks. Mostly, this would be stupid stuff, but
> aided by poor security. For example, when teachers threatened to find
> out which person was printing pornographic images on the laser printer,
> the kid simply logged in using the account of another who had moved
> school the year before: their account was still active, but unused that
> year, so still had the default password. Teachers found the culprit
> printing the porn, and found that he had left school the previous year
> and was a couple of hundred miles away.

All of which might well be amusing for the kids, but I can assure you
that in many of the schools I deal with this would result in expulsion.
Ok, they might not find the culprit but this *is* anti-social behaviour
and it does drag resources from other areas in dealing with it. Its
difficult to argue that we should be saving money on software licenses
when at the same time we accept behaviour that will cause infinitely
greater costs in staff time. Usually schools that have the expectation
that kids are kids and will therefore behave badly end up in special
measures because the prophesy is fulfilled. Those that expect and demand
high standards usually get them.

> If kids find problems with PCs, or backdoors, you can bet that they will
> exploit them. I saw it in secondary school right through to sixth form,
> where these kids aren't necessarily terribly interested in computers at
> all. They take the "Tomorrow's World" screensaver, remove the video of
> the baby swimming in water and replace it with captures from the webcam
> of someone doing something stupid. The truly destructive ones open the
> shutters on floppy disks, put some staples through the platter, and pop
> the disks in the "new floppies" pile. 

Kids will get up to all sorts of mischief if the culture of the
organisation is that way inclined. Its not confined to computers. While
its not possible to stop all such things, maybe to an extent
undesirable, if you start allowing these things on a boys will be boys
basis, its the quickest way to a failing school. Trust me I have
inspected scores of them.

> Computer hardware is expensive, and it's delicate in many ways. Software
> is definitely delicate. In order not to have huge costs running school
> IT, the school is either going to look for something that is disposable
> or is robust (or, preferably, both).

If that was true they would all be running GNU/Linux. 

>  The cost will only go down so far;
> they need something which is rock solid. They rarely have many staff
> dedicated to IT, so you kind of have to assume that they're not going to
> be able to maintain things.

You also create a culture where the kids feel proud to be positive
rather than negative contributors to the community. Encouraging or even
tolerating them brining down servers, vandalising disc drives and
downloading porn is bad enough, but allowing them to link such behaviour
to Linux is real bad marketing. Even if its not specific to Linux that
association could well be the one they remember.

-- 
Ian Lynch <address@hidden>
ZMS Ltd