What a complete load of tosh. Education is about teaching children valuable skills they can apply in their daily lives. How many of them would ever see a PC running Linux again? The cost argument doesn't really stand up either, books cost money and 'do nothing but line the pockets of the publishers' to paraphrase the author. It's not as if computers running Linux cost nothing either.
If Linux is going to find a place in mainstream education, it's going to have to earn it. This is of course quite possible. Raspberry Pi is a good example of this. I can see Linux forming a valuable part of a more advanced secondary school computing curriculum too.
The article is living in the past though. Many children now, and many more in then future will equate computers with tablets. Some will run iOS, others will run Android and maybe some might even run Windows. Decisions about which solution best serves the educational needs of children should be in the hands of educators, not technological partisans.
My normal day involves dissecting frogs, working out quickly equations like 13x12 in my head and calculating when two trains heading in opposite directions are going to pass each other.
Just last week, I was held at gunpoint and told to find the integral of an equation, then - you won't believe this - my boss said I was fired unless I could write 1000 words on Jane Austin's "Pride and Prejudice" by the following day.
I have never had to encounter linux, and I'm so glad there are people like you fighting to keep education relevant!
I don't wish to hijack this thread but tying the Raspberry Pi to education is terrible if you ask me.
I agreed about the Raspberry Pi being the best device for education right from day one. That was until my father bought my daughter one for her birthday and I ended up being the resident "fix it guru" for it.
The thing teaches you merely how to jump through funny shaped hoops to get something working rather than anything realistic or helpful. Most of it is google-fu and copy and paste. When you do finally get there it's a baron land of absolutely unrealistic, undocumented crud that can't self-serve. Plus it barely works and browns out to start with resulting in USB-hub jiggery-pokery (and that only happens because I actually understand how USB works).
For ref, I have 20 years' of Unix and Linux experience (right down to writing kernel drivers) and it was painful getting it off the ground so I'm not approaching it blind.
Being critical (constructively!) of this results in the RPI forum thread being deleted which in itself an affront and a general recommendation against the things.
Could it be that you were exited about fiddling with rpi yourself? I don't have children but I guess it's difficult to deliberately not help them (too much) solving problems which are inherently interesting to you (grumpy neckbeardism can't hide that fact, you obviously still care about this).
I think rpi (culture/ecosystem) is still absolutely the best thing, it's literally the perfect AppleII/C64 for today. Today is also more complex and more stuff is possible but there is also Unix which at least tries to be simple.
I've given one of my rpis to my 13 year old neighbour and he is regularly meddling with it. It's likely that he is also constantly failing but that's what is needed in order to learn, it certainly was the case for me when I started (I'm still failing after many years, that's a reality).
Where you could make a difference is just by saying you'll be there to answer some questions ... now and then. Encouragement and enthusiasm!
Not particularly excited. After spending a number of years with embedded systems, my tolerance has faded a little. We tried the "follow the instructions" and no help thing to start with. Unfortunately we were blessed with only a composite video cable which is to be fair, a flipping nightmare of reading inconclusive LED states and fumbling around in the dark with no video output. That is where the documentation stops and years of prior experience of embedded systems and knowing what to search for kicks in. Each step came with its own pile of crud to deal with. Each hoop jumped through chips a little bit of interest away. The inevitable question that gets asked is:
"Dad: is this what your job is about?"
It's not and never has been.
The perfect Apple 2 / C64 (or in my case, BBC Model B) was the one that you opened the box, plugged it in and it worked the moment you turned it on without fail, every time and never poked you in the eye unless you told it to.
I still think the (partial inspiration for the Pi) i.e. the BBC Micro is still a better starting point than the Pi itself. Well documented, relatively simple, very powerful, forgiving and the ability to write high level (basic) or low level code (assembly) from the get go from the books that came with it, can play games on it and if you screw anything up, just restart it.
True we aren't at Apple II level, open hardware would be great but as I said the whole culture surrounding it as well as the documentation which exists is really good. It's still a very cool project which succeed to get this ball rolling, obviously there is room for improvement.
I won a grant to build, donate, and maintain Raspberry Pi computers to rural schools in South Africa (about 7). It was a large project. Absolute nightmare. In the end I just started buying second hand computers and installing XUbuntu (much higher performance, much lower cost). I donated the Raspberry Pis to a university engineering department and managed to buy double the expected number in second hand computers for rural schools, feel much better about it. Raspberry Pi is simply a gimmick for those that love that kind of thing (which is fine), but it should NOT be marketed as a way to get kids to learn programming, or as a replacement for a computer. It's simply too expensive, and does not cater to the educational needs of those struggling to learn programming/IT.
I'm interested to hear in the problems you had and how getting 2nd hand computers turn out to be lower cost than the Pi. Do you have a write-up of your experience somewhere? Couldn't find anything on your HN profile.
Yes the RPI could use a bit of improvement. It needs better X performance and a restart switch. But the RPI is the best small computer out there with the most support. Give it a few iterations and improvements and it could really be useful at home.
My problem is that in 1982 you could really impress your kids with simple programs. Now my child wouldn't be impressed unless you create an 3D princess game. The hurdle to catch a child's imagination is 10x higher.
sounds like it fits perfectly into education then. It's much like a lot of the working world as well. A lesson in grit perhaps? A lesson in our tenuous grasp in technology. At least it's something that can be held in your hands and not a group's invented agreement about how something should be (grammar) or subjective watered down recounts of reality (social studies).
The author's argument is mainly that Windows as a dominant OS for school computers is more expensive than Linux, and is proprietary.
What the author fails to take into account is that the major cost to schools and school systems is the continuing cost of ownership for these computers. Updates, maintenance, tech support, all cost time and money. I regularly perform alternatives analyses for clients, and while I'd love to more often recommend open source solutions, the risk of finding qualified support or full-time employees, and the often greater costs associated with that service, is usually too high to not go proprietary (all features and needs being otherwise equal).
However, I do agree with the spirit of one of the author's ethos(es?), and perhaps disagree with simonh here -- a flavor of Linux shouldn't be discounted because the students may never see it again. The OS really doesn't matter so long as tools are provided for word processing, performing internet research and exploring information that students may discover. There's a wealth of this in the mainstream Linux distros and I think it'd be a fine alternative.
You're contradicting yourself in the rush to sound like an authority.
Androids is a Linux computer.
Learning linux is vital - because Linux runs everywhere, and almost everything!
Been on a train in Europe? Your life is being protected by Linux. Made an Internet connection in the USA? You're using Linux, somewhere.
Teaching kids to use the Linux OS should be as equally valid an approach as teaching them Windows. The Linux ecosystem is as equally viable as any other - so why should kids miss out on the value of this technology, just because a corporate lackey has managed to make a deal with school administrators?
>Androids is a Linux computer.
>
>Learning linux is vital - because Linux runs everywhere, and almost everything!
Is using Android really your idea of learning Linux? iOS is a Unix variant too. Do you really think those facts are in any way relevant to the learning experience of children using them? That's pure technological partisanship, based on an agenda that has nothing whatever to do with education.
Well, do you want kids to understand their computing systems, or would you prefer they just be placid consumers? I think you're asking for the latter just because you have a personal grudge against "Linux" not being some corporate property.
Linux is a commons resource. ABSOLUTELY, children should know how they can use the commons resource they have available to them - anything else, and you set up future generations for even more corporate control.
In case you're an un-educated American who doesn't know what the commons is, and why Linux is such an important resource when viewed from a commons perspective, educate yourself:
I know that commons is anathema to American industrial thinking, but alas .. this is precisely why its important to educate our children on what rights, responsibilities, and resources they have available to them. Linux is a very, very powerful tool which belongs to everyone. Microsoft Windows belongs to the shareholders of Microsoft - and nobody else.
I don't have to understand how my car works in order to be able to use it. Sure, everyone would benefit from someday learning to use Linux, but to say it's vital is extreme exaggeration.
You say that now, but wait until your car is broken down in the middle of nowhere and you really need to get home.
You see, your argument doesn't really work in your favour, either - because cars have been following the computerization model (or is it the other way around) for years .. whereas you once could have worked on your car, now its completely locked down, you need special proprietary tools to work on it, and you're not going to be able to function as a driver without further investing in the infrastructure. A pity, as it used to be that kids in their teens could repair cars, if they need to.
Do you really think your position improves society, or perhaps it just serves to justify its current state of utter incompetence?
In the early 1980s, Apple decided that they were going to own the education market. They sent salespeople to school districts, explaining that computers -- the future of education, as everyone and magazine articles said -- could be affordable, and here was a complete plan including discounts, financing, and software.
The result was that the Apple II series did take over the education market, and also sold quite a few machines to the parents of kids who used Apples in school.
School is not about making you smart or giving you a job. It's about giving them the power to drive their lives.
Computer education is important and should really have a more important part. And when I say computer, I'm not advocating for PC, mobiles, Windows, Linux, or whatever thing whose market share will have drastically changed in ten years.
Children should be taught that they can have a computer do tasks for them and, if possible, without practical dependence on whichever architecture/OS you pick. I don't care which system they train on, as long as they get that computers are logical systems with predictable output. I don't care which language they learn, as long as it makes them understand computers are not some black boxes but things they can control.
Also, I would like such an education to teach that the Internet is not some big corporation controlled by shady lolcatz or a box supervised by elders in Big Ben. I would like them to know that the World is vast and that the Internet is shallow; the Internet is in their reach and allow them to go farther than ever (geographically, but also intellectually).
tl;dr: the important is making them understand they can, not necessarily how (they should be able to teach themselves specific skills)
Why would he. Android is a consumer operating system that has many differences from linux on the server or desktop. Namely, it conceals the inner workings.
Forcing people to use Linux sounds antagonizing and like it'd hurt the reputation of Linux. The same way feminists / marketers think they should be CTO's and top developers with nothing but twitter followers - and how it could potentially hurt females who no axe to grind who actually love engineering.
The tablets are not easily programmable _from the tablet_.
The distinction has to be between educating people how to do things on the computer (which really doesn't take all that long, but can turn into "qualifications in specfic version of Word"), versus understanding the technology enough to fix your own problems and develop new things.
What other common subjects that employ a large proportion of the population do you think shouldn't be taught in schools?
When exactly do children apply geology in their daily lives, or calculate refraction? It sounds as if you're making a case for home economics, basic arithmetic, and reading to be the only subjects. Maybe marketing?
>Education is about teaching children valuable skills they can apply in their daily lives.
Train the proles up so that they can be useful to their future employers? Teaching any specific vendor's products exclusively isn't a proper role for a public institution.
> How many of them would ever see a PC running Linux again?
Practically none, if the educators who choose which company's products are the winners tend strongly to one vendor's products.
> The cost argument doesn't really stand up either,
No, but it bothers me a bit that one dominant market player gets the majority of public money, and another tends to get nothing. I'm not sure how to solve this though.
>books cost money and 'do nothing but line the pockets of the publishers' to paraphrase the author.
There are a lot of fair criticisms of the textbook publishing industry.
> It's not as if computers running Linux cost nothing either.
True. But at my college, Microsoft licensing is a budget item as is maintenance of Windows PC's. If they were Linux PC's the replacement for those expenditures would probably cost less. A more proper solution would probably cost slightly more than standardizing exclusively on Windows.
>If Linux is going to find a place in mainstream education, it's going to have to earn it. This is of course quite possible.
Public institutions ought not to be picking winners here. It isn't appropriate.
>Decisions about which solution best serves the educational needs of children should be in the hands of educators, not technological partisans.
Well, currently it is usually in the hands of institution IT folk, most of which (in my experience) tend to be technological partisans.
Yeah, but they need to see that life is difficult and you have to struggle to become successful. What could be better than a bit of Linux to give a taste of that?
Android is a Linux-based OS. You can use an AOSP-derived distribution as a hackable Linux. Nearly every hosting service provides Linux. Linux is in your TV, STB, and car (maybe in the form of Android).
How many YC ventures' server software are running on a hosted Linux system? How many of their endpoints are running on Android? Was the toolchain Linux-based?
It's more likely that you have a smartphone rather than a PC. It's more likely you have an old, unused smartphone than that you have and old unused PC for paying with operating systems. If you are writing software, it's more likely you are targeting a Linux instance running in a VM at a hosting service or a smartphone, than a Windows PC.
My school used Windows for everything. I remember when in year 7 (6th grade) I was complaining about the computers to my IT teacher, as many do. His response was "there is another way!".
A few days later, he found me and gave me a Linux live CD with Knoppix on it. I remember it claimed to have 2GB of software, compressed into the 700MB a CD could hold. I could put it in my family computer at home, and without installing anything, changing settings, messing up the computer my parents used in any way, I could use an entirely different OS, it was amazing!
This was the point at which I realised how software and hardware were truly separated. A computer was no longer an 'appliance'. The "start button" wasn't part of the computer, it was just some software that I could replace.
I believe, and have told many people in the years since, that this was the turning point in my computer education, that has lead to me studying computer science, and becoming a software developer.
Linux should be a part of school education, because teaching kids that computers aren't appliances, that hardware and software have a split, and you can change both, is crucial to developing a real understanding of how they work.
Ah Knoppix. I remember how blown away I was when I first ran the Live CD; at that time I had no idea it was even possible. It's a shame that it faded from popularity once Ubuntu came along.
I really think Live CDs are one of the best educational tools for those that already have an interest in computers. Even better now would be one that was integrated with some online services like Dropbox (or Ubuntu One?) to get some basic persistence to make things like learning to code more possible on it.
I too have many fond memories of Knoppix I discovered it in the 11th grade; I remember being mesmerised by the rows of multi-coloured console text at boot up with that cool rotating carat and all the badass software it came default with- like ettercap and Wireshark.. What a script kiddie I was, lol. People think such superficial details are unimportant but they really do leave an impression on you. Writing this from Ubuntu 13.10..
Teaching those topics at school is crazy. This is just "random stuff" for kids, completely nonsense.
We should teach "how" computers work (very basic principles) and maybe "how" communications work (very basic principles). And definitely we don't need to teach kids about HTTP... Maybe, and only maybe, we could teach them how a programming language can help them with their "math homeworks" and things like that...
Actually, I think teaching about HTTP isn't a bad example. At it's base it is pretty simple to understand, there are good tools to work with it, it's hugely important and it leads on nicely to things like DNS and security.
There are thousands of applications that abstract normal people from the "HTTP". Knowing stuff is a great thing, but forcing people to learn stuff is something totally different.
Show kids how to build a webpage with HTTP and CSS and they will run for their lives. Maybe you can teach them how to configure any content manager making an effort in explain them how having a webpage can affect their lives and how can they prevent them (security, privacy...).
It is school guys, teach kids useful tools for their lives, don't bore them with hypes (I am purposely obviating the "brain" development thing).
So right, but you have to use "something" as example, I don't mind which one you prefer as long as it comes with a "how this affect my life" explanation.
Teaching those in school would be a waste of time. I work full time in the tech industry and don't fully understand all of those topics because they are irrelevant to me. People are never going to need to understand them for daily use.
Until you've learned something, you'll never know how you might use it productively. I use all of those topics daily because they make me more productive. I'm sorry you haven't learned just how productive you can be by understanding these things - but this is no reason to deny the knowledge to future generations, just because you're ignorant...
i'm glad people like you exist because providing expertise on really basic shit like dns and http for a low, low monthy cost! is making me and all my cofounders quite wealthy.
can you tell me a few other fundamental internet technologies you think are irrelevant to your internet job? we need some ideas for expansion in 2014.
I hope you're making use of all the not-wasteful-for-your-area topics you learned in school: covalent bonds, subordinate clauses, electromagnetic induction, anatomy of reptiles...
There's plenty more people using HTTP than there are biologists in the world, you still get fed up all those subjects that don't suit your area. Why single out the ones that are mostly likely to be useful to anyone?
A lot of folks here will disagree with you, but I totally get where you're coming from. Schools, especially at lower levels, should focus on practical skills, rather than theoretical ones.
Future accountants and mechanics aren't going to benefit much from understanding how DNS works, but they can benefit from knowing how to install an OS, or even doing high-level automation.
One should teach children using the best tools for the job; cost should not be an issue here in the consideration. What is the quality of educational software in the Linux world compared to Windows? What about compared to OS X? What about usability? Accessibility? A rather vapid statement about "cost" isn't going to cut it as an argument as to why Linux should be used.
Even amongst Free operating systems, why Linux? What are the advantages compared to FreeBSD, or OpenBSD, FreeDOS, or ReactOS? In an article like this, you need more than a few vague statements to back it up ideology, you need evidence and proof that Linux is the best route.
I agree. It would be much more useful to focus on things like the differences between package management systems in various OS's and maybe point out the strengths. For Linux this would be easy scripting and generic problem solving while in Windows you have a much more "solution" based ecosystem.
Don't misunderstand me, I don't advocate hardcore CS for everyone, but some basic scripting would not hurt the average student.
How a computer actually works, probably something microkernel-based, like Minix. Stripped down, show just what needs to be shown for the lesson at hand, and much easier to get inside and play with the gears.
Programming? I'd say the OS doesn't really matter. Simple, easy to see initial result environments like MIT's Scratch, or Logo run on pretty much everything.
Well, this is for a learning environment for children, so I'd argue getting a language with a good hook is important. Additionally, both environments also offer a more interesting language under the hood to poke at -- for scratch, smalltalk/actionscript, and for logo, the lisp-style language under the hood -- to teach the more advanced concepts. Give interesting, easy results, but then use that to build on how to bring in more and more in-depth concepts.
No it shouldn't, and honestly neither should programming. Sometimes I swear we can get so drunk on our own farts that we think engineering is the only valuable profession in the world, when in reality not everyone needs to be able to code a rails app if all they want to do is check their Facebook. There are many other jobs that are important and valuable to society that do not involve CS - lets just put down the kook-aid.
If a person does not understand how the world around them works (and most of it is driven by computers), how can we expect them to adequately operate in it?
A couple weeks back I remember the case when someone bleached her home because she feared she could catch the viruses on her computer. There are many people who do, for the lack of a better word, rituals with their computers because they can't figure out their wi-fi radio tales some time to grab the local network signal. They do it because they did it once and it worked and they have no idea it had nothing to do with the problem they were trying to solve.
A basic understanding of technology is increasingly important.
So Linux is somehow immune against people ritualising how they interact with a computer? They will have a problem one day, google for a solution and remember that solution. Few will actively try understanding the solution and how and why it works.
Operating systems don't have magical powers for making users interested in their internals.
It's not immune, but chances are that, during the time you are googling solutions for your problem, you'll have to learn something about how computers actually work. If the solution points you to a series of "click here, then here" screens, you won't get any useful insights on how it's done under the hood because you spent the whole time above it.
Suggestions to solve a problem on Linux often are written on a similar level, it's just that »click here, then here« gets replaced by »edit this part of that config file and then run this series of arcane invocations«. Oftentimes you can just copy/paste from some forum and won't learn anything from it.
Bullshit. Most people doesn't know a shit about electronics and they are surrounded with electronic equipment. And this is an example, there are a lot of things I don't know almost anything about them and I can successfully operate with them.
I believe almost everybody know that electricity can kill you and this is taught at school.
Evidently if you try to repair your TV (without knowing how to repair it), change the electrical installation of your house (without knowing anything), touching a high intensity cable or something like that it is a dead by accident or by stupidity.
It's primitive tribalism. People should learn "computing" as part of a school education as over life things are going to change and they're going to need to adapt.
The problem is that neither windows nor OSX teach computing or computing culture. They teach the feudal model. The increasingly walled gardens. The "When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout" Currently Linux is the place where you can get your hands dirty and has the Wild West spirit that the 80s,90s and the internet had. We should teach the kids to spit in the face of authority and when obeying it to do it so reluctantly. And currently we are doing the exact opposite in all areas of human knowlege.
However they're just the foundations on which you teach. Programming languages, tools and software packages are the important bits. Which OS doesn't matter really. Neither does any red vs blue pill selection.
Most of my knowledge is applicable to any platform as it's fairly generic. I avoid specialisation for this reason.
I can sit down on any machine and be productive straight away regardless of if it's open source or a feudal empire. That's what we should be teaching.
I think this is a great idea. My secondary school (UK) actually had a wealth of voccational subjects. From the age of 13 I studied Cisco, Red Hat and then Oracle DB. By 16 I had a CCNA. Oracle Certified DBA and a few vendor certifications like Security+ and Network+
The real issue was Universities acknowledge them as points towards UCAS so practically everyone on the course ended up staying on another year or two and studied other subjects to get the necessary points.
I'm hopeful that one day the system will cater for more subjects but its a long way way at least in the UK.
If someone were using Linux to teach I as a student would think their using some crap computers. Like it or not students don't see the potential of Linux like we do and truth is Windows is still more user friendly then Linux when it comes to doing some moderately advanced things.
Probably the closest you can get is KDE since for most users if the setting isn't in the GUI it doesn't exist.
It would be cool if schools had a mix of windows and Linux computers though that way students can learn that Windows doesn't equal computer there are other OS's as well. And before you ask no, where I'm from Apple was as if it didn't exist.
I only learned about Linux when i was 14 and to be honest i though it was crap at first since all Linux windowing systems that I tried were awful.
But i continued to discover more of my system and figured out that Linux without the terminal is only appropriate for grandmas that can barely use a computer and are unlikely to run into driver issues when connecting new devices.
> I as a student would think their using some crap computers.
When was the last time you saw a machine running Linux in person?
> unlikely to run into driver issues when connecting new devices.
I am not a grandma and the last device that didn't play nice with my Linux machines was a prototype Blackberry phone. I somehow don't think it was the computer's fault.
Actually my main OS is Arch Linux and i only use windows at work.
While now I rarely run into driver issues that are very serious i still needed to replace my Wifi card on my laptop to be able to run it in monitor mode about 1 year ago.
So no Linux still has driver issues with certain hardware. Granted this is a bad example since it's quite a technical requirement and it's not Linux's fault but the manufacturers however Linux driver coverage is not as vast as windows nor do products come with a CD containing drivers for Linux so if it doesn't work regular users aren't going to care why.
While windows 95 was getting big, at school and we had a course of technical learning where we'd use a Thomson T-08 to move a robotic arm, picking bricks on a conveyer belt.
Were we impressed by the machine ? Hell no, everyone knew it was a piece of crap in that day and age. Just as we were not impressed by retroprojectors, chalk boards, out of date cassette players and 10. years old science experiment stuff.
Did we learn to program the arm in some simple basic like language I forgot how it looked like ? Well, yes, because we wanted good grades. Like for every other course.
I think most of us didn't care about programming, but at least the ones that never touched a computer before got to know how an algorithm would look like and how a program runs.
Linux at school should be efficient on the same level, to teach basic things (not just programming of course) and give a first experience in something students might not care about at all.
PS: to be clear, I don't think linux at school should be used to push linux, helping some group's agenda shouldn't be school's role. Giving students more insight into how the *nix like systems work and can be used is a better goal, primary windows user could bet behind as well.
>If someone were using Linux to teach I as a student would think their using some crap computers.
Why does the installed OS imply anything at all about the quality of the hardware?
> Like it or not students don't see the potential of Linux ...
Why would they, if they have never been exposed to it?
>and truth is Windows is still more user friendly then Linux when it comes to doing some moderately advanced things.
I've always felt the opposite is true, that most Windows based solutions enable people to do easy things easier than with Linux, but that implementing more complex solutions often quickly becomes harder on the Windows platform than on Linux. That's been my experience, YMMV.
>It would be cool if schools had a mix of windows and Linux computers though that way students can learn that Windows doesn't equal computer there are other OS's as well. And before you ask no, where I'm from Apple was as if it didn't exist.
I agree. I think it makes for better educated graduates, and a better marketplace for computing products.
>I only learned about Linux when i was 14 and to be honest i though it was crap at first since all Linux windowing systems that I tried were awful.
> Why does the installed OS imply anything at all about the quality of the hardware?
It doesn't for people who understand the technology but a kid learning in school will asses the entire package as a whole with the limited skills he has at using it mind you.
> Why would they, if they have never been exposed to it?
I doubt they would even if they were exposed to it. I takes a lot of dedication to reach the point where you're comfortable with the terminal and see it's potential. I don't think students would reach that point in school.
> I've always felt the opposite is true, that most Windows based solutions enable people to do easy things easier than with Linux, but that implementing more complex solutions often quickly becomes harder on the Windows platform than on Linux. That's been my experience, YMMV.
It is from a technical point of view but for the average person who will never need to do anything more complex it isn't. And even if they do need something more complex they're already invested into windows so it's unlikely they'll switch. Since windows made it easier in the beginning they'll assume that the pattern continues.
>I doubt they would even if they were exposed to it. I takes a lot of dedication to reach the point where you're comfortable with the terminal and see it's potential. I don't think students would reach that point in school.
Linux is perfectly capable for use as a general purpose computing appliance. It is not ideal for every task, but no OS is. The terminal isn't necessary for everyone.
>It is from a technical point of view but for the average person who will never need to do anything more complex it isn't.
If you're talking about the most casual users, then I disagree, those people don't care or need to know much about their facebook appliance.
>And even if they do need something more complex they're already invested into windows so it's unlikely they'll switch.
Because someone made that arbitrary choice for them.
> Since windows made it easier in the beginning they'll assume that the pattern continues.
Which is an argument against reinforcing those patterns.
Oh my (hypothetical) God. For a moment there I thought this was The Linux Foundation (not federation.)
Coming to the topic at hand: This reeks of fanboyism and fanaticism. While I personally agree that young people should be introduced to more than Windows as a part of their edution in computing, this is taking the rhetoric too far.
> Imagine where humanity could be today if we had used that approach right from the start and for every single product out there.
That is exactly the model Linux has offered for over two decades now. If it was such a good model, systems like Windows and MacOS should now be history.
And they still dominate because money still dominates what we do. We run after the money (= have power over the others), not after what creates sense in our lives. This is probably the most central value and problem in our culture. When that will be gone, life will be worth so much more.
I believe all government institutions should be using open source software virtually everywhere (if something doesn't exist yet, they can build it). That way the things we build with taxpayer money will be much longer lasting, and interoperability with future technologies should be a much easier task, rather than relying on the whim of a private company and its profit incentives.
Linux is so used in education. It isn't used as widely as it ought to be, but it is most certainly used, and its share is growing. I am a CC instructor in a vocational program, and each year our students install both Linux and Windows on our lab PC's. They will use this PC throughout the year to complete their coursework and are responsible for maintaining it. Graduates of our program will have installed both operating systems at least twice, often many more times. I think it is important to promote general computing skills even though that is not my department's core discipline.
I don't think it is wrong for a college to have a Microsoft site license, but I do think it is wrong for a public college to require a specific vendor's products where equivalents exist. I also think it is wrong for a public college to force students' exclusive use of a single vendor's products. Computers are mere tools and it isn't the job of a public institution to choose winners.
At least in Uruguay, and by some definition, Linux is part of the school education. All public schools students have an XO, running Linux, Sugar as desktop environment, mesh networking, and a bunch of educational apps, including Scratch (not very explored in class unfortunately) and Turtle Art, that is also used to explore robotics in schools with the project Butia.
But linux per se is not the central target. But i would trade that for what they are actually learning, specially at their age. It leaves the door open to exploration, and so far 2 students from here already won the google code-in for activities related with Sugar.
The problem here is that (in the UK at least) kids come out of school knowing nothing about about a computer works or programming - windows/mac/ios/android increasingly hide this from you. Kids think that programming a computer game is some trival task and have no idea how to even make the simplest of programs.
The counter point is that they shouldn't need to know this, but then why do we teach flower germination? or the causes of the second world war? or Shakespeare? - I've never had to use these in everyday life.
It's not all that bad now and wasn't when I was at school (in the UK). During my time, we had the Acorn BBC Micro to start with, then the Archimedes. These were both programmers dream machines and code we did, usually plugged into large Lego machines. After that it diverged into "office studies" as RM dumped millions of PC clones but there was still Quick Basic and Turbo Pascal available that was taught at a lot of schools either as a mainstream subject or through "computer clubs".
Now there was a gap for me but I have children now and they are learning how to write HTML and basic JavaScript. They are using software to produce video productions and stop-frame animations, they are even getting instruction from parents on how to write python. They have Windows desktops, iPads and a few Linux netbooks. They have it pretty good.
And this is a London primary school with an Ofsted "needs improvement" rating.
Well, I'm glad about that. I guess I was the 'lost generation' - sure, it was BBC Micros and Acorns at primary, but we basically used them for Chuckie Egg and Lander respectively - no code. By the time I got to secondary, it was the 'Office Studies' era.
If it hadn't have been, I might have skipped the 7 year continental philosophy grad school detour. Ah well...
As for Linux in schools, my feeling would be that there should be a room or two of Linux boxes, and the rest should be Windows - simply because 90% of computer usage in schools, according to some statistics I just made up, consists of doing your homework double quick at breaktime or other mundane uses where it would be better if kids were working with an OS they recognise from home. People who want to do CS/code type subjects should be taught Linux, and it should be available to 'computer clubs' etc.
At school I had much the same type of machines which I could program on, though in my final year as they moved to windows, pretty much any possibility of programming was taken away due to the system.
I visited a school the other day, all they seemed to have were windows machines, which presumably are pretty locked down. Fortunately we brought Raspberry Pis to the school and kids seem to love it and learnt a bit of python on them.
> have no idea how to even make the simplest of programs.
The simplest possible programs are still very simple and short. Even with verbose languages.
One drawback here is that even a simple game by modern standards is light-years ahead of my best efforts on the Apple II. And those best efforts would be considered rather mundane or sub-standard today. A modern-looking program involves interacting with a GUI library and they are complicated animals.
What a successful teacher should do is to instill the love for the essential part of the program. When you write a "guess the number", there is no need for particle generators, applause, music and animated backgrounds. Keeping the basics short the kids will learn that programming is no different than creative writing using imperative forms all the time.
IMO all kids at school should be taught an ugly, difficult language like x86 assembly. Hardly any of them will understand it to a significant degree, but they will appreciate how difficult working with computers is. They will be more impressed with say, grep, or the original DOOM game.
Some of those kids will grow up to be somebody's boss, that potentially annoying, ignorant boss that expects you to juggle knives while tap-dancing in clogs.
I don't think it's a bad idea. Generally, I'd say skills learnt using Linux would be fairly transferable to other computer based tasks, regardless of OS.
The article however; utter shite. It's bad journalism.
'do nothing but line the pockets of the publishers', well yes. The company does profit from this, so? That's not valid argument to not use it in a schools? It should be approached from a 'look what we can learn from free tools' angle.
Of course it should. The Linux cli is as good a gateway to understanding of the world around you as the Commodore 64 and the Apple II clis were for me as a kid.
If you start a child off with Windows or Mac, look forward to them maybe not ever understanding what a directory is, or that a computer has two types of memory. Consciously choosing and paying a premium to learn computing from Windows or Mac OS sounds to me only mildly better than trying to learn computing with a Playstation. They're simply not meant to be user serviceable.
I don't know what to say about not teaching children computing. There's a better case for teaching computing than any other science, if you judge usefulness by daily opportunity to use your skills to understand and improve your situation. The only reason I'd be against it is because I love being overpaid to do simple work due to the ignorance of the general population of the machines that completely run their lives.
My goal for a childhood education in computing would be to produce an adult that understands the capacity and flexibility of computing, and can be trusted to manage or hire computer workers, an adult who won't over or underestimate what can be done with computers, and an adult that has a deep relationship with the devices which, from now on, are going to be in physical contact with them at all times.
Yes, it's more important than learning how to fix your car. I've never had a car. How many people can say that about a computer? How many people can say that about a computer without ignoring embedded devices?
> I don't know what to say about not teaching children computing. There's a better case for teaching computing than any other science, if you judge usefulness by daily opportunity to use your skills to understand and improve your situation. The only reason I'd be against it is because I love being overpaid to do simple work due to the ignorance of the general population of the machines that completely run their lives
Well, at least you're honest about it, but I think that line of thinking does lead to certain problems in the industry. One that popped immediately to mind was:
What are the two types of memory of a computer? Can you recommend any resources (books/websites) to learning things like that about a computer?
Edit: I googled it but each result explained a different type of memory (caches, system RAM, virtual memory, hard drive) or (RAM vs ROM) or (Primary vs Secondary).
There are, in reality, a lot of different memory types in your computer. Some of it is DRAM. A tiny little bit is SRAM. There must also be some ROM in there, as well as some Flash, which may or may not be hooked to the computer pretending to be a hard disk. There are various entire subsystems composed of DRAM/SRAM in the peripherals of the computer (such as your hard drive, your wi-fi adaptor, your GPU card).
There's a place called the internet. It has information for you.
edit: there's volatile memory and non-volatile memory. Or hundreds of different types for every place they're used, every purpose, and every brand name they're sold under, for trolls who miss the forest for the trees.
I wasn't trolling, hence the account name. Its hard to learn about how computers work because I don't even know where to start. When I typed "types of computer memory", there are a bunch of different resources. Its difficult and inefficient to just google every term/acronym I don't know. But thanks anyways for the answer.
I apologize: downvotes and 5 minute old accounts make me think troll.
Volatile memory, like RAM, needs a constant source of power to hold information, but is very fast, so computers use it for calculation, or information that it will come back to immediately. Non-volatile memory, like a hard drive, holds information even when the power is turned off.
cache: means a temporary place to hold stuff, and isn't a particular type of memory.
system RAM: is volatile memory used by the system.
virtual memory: is stuff that was in system RAM but hasn't been used in a while, so was stored on a hard drive for a moment. Or rather, the place on a hard drive that you've reserved for that stuff.
hard drive: non-volatile, spinning platters written on with magnetism, like a cassette tape. It's better than a cassette tape because you don't have to rewind or fast-forward the entire thing to get to what you want.
RAM: is volatile memory
ROM: is non-volatile memory that is written once, and usually never erased and rewritten. Many forms of ROM actually can be rewritten, but to the extent that it's easy to rewrite ROM, the less it counts as ROM.
Primary: another word for system RAM.
Secondary: another word for non-volatile memory, like hard drives.
Thanks for your answers. Its really impressive if you rattled all of that without even having to refer to anything except previous knowledge. I'm not sure I quite understand the general interaction between the parts but it definitely makes 100x more sense now than before.
> Its difficult and inefficient to just google every term/acronym I don't know.
Hackers love acronyms, I don't mind them unless there is ambiguity (I haven't yet come across any).
A couple of years back I was in the same situation as yourself, when I bagged my first laptop. The only advice I can give you regarding getting to grips with computers is to focus on one subject at a time (which is easier said than done, especially if you get lost in the myriad of wikipedia articles).
A few weeks ago I lost my desktop (I run ubuntu), and could only access the system through terminal. Luckily I knew enough about using the command line to find a solution (I think I typed in sudo apt-get ubuntu-desktop). Sooner or later knowledge of little use becomes vital.
I've been teaching high school computing for 10 years, and our regular classroom and computer lab works fine. Our machines ran Windows XP the first two years, then we switched to Linux, and are running a Debian distribution currently.
I don't teach Linux, I teach operating systems generally. Most of my students use different OSes already: Windows on a home desktop or laptop, iOS or Android on a phone. Learning Linux for school is no big deal for them.
I teach word processing, not Word or OOWriter; and spreadsheets, not Excel or OOCalc. In a one-semester course, I introduce and compare OSes, do some shell scripts to contrast the CLI and GUI, introduce HTML and create some web pages, then cover word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software. This course is required for graduation as is a second one-semester course. This uses Kernighan's book "D is for Digital" [ http://kernighan.com ] and covers what any well-informed person should know about computing: hardware, software, networking, and data.
I enjoy using Linux as a platform for teaching computing for three reasons: (1) Linux boxes are cheaper than PCs or Macs. (2) The idea of choosing one's OS fits well with our charter school's ideas of making one's own educational choices. (3) Students learn more about the systems they use at home -- Windows, OS X, or whatever -- by contrast with Linux, just as they learn more about their first language (English, say) by studying a foreign language.
Special camps and tutors are fine, but I don't think they are necessary in many cases.
If Linux is going to find a place in mainstream education, it's going to have to earn it. This is of course quite possible. Raspberry Pi is a good example of this. I can see Linux forming a valuable part of a more advanced secondary school computing curriculum too.
The article is living in the past though. Many children now, and many more in then future will equate computers with tablets. Some will run iOS, others will run Android and maybe some might even run Windows. Decisions about which solution best serves the educational needs of children should be in the hands of educators, not technological partisans.