Followup To "When Teachers Are Obstacles To Linux" 626
An couple of anonymous readers wrote in to let us know about a followup to last Wednesday's story of the teacher who didn't believe in free software. The Linux advocate who posted the original piece has cooled off and graciously apologized for going off half-cocked (even though the teacher had done the same), and provided a little more background which, while not excusing the teacher's ignorance, does make her actions somewhat more understandable. Ken Starks has talked with the teacher, who has received a crash education in technology over the last few days — Starks is installing Linux on her computer tomorrow. He retracts his insinuations about Microsoft money and the NEA. All in all he demonstrates what a little honest communication can do, a lesson that all of us who advocate for free software can take to heart. "The student did get his Linux disks back after the class. The lad was being disruptive, but that wasn't mentioned. Neither was the obvious fact that when she saw a gaggle of giggling 8th grade boys gathered around a laptop, the last thing she expected to see on that screen was a spinning cube. She didn't know what was on those disks he was handing out. It could have been porn, viral .exe's...any number of things for all she knew. When she heard that an adult had given him some of the disks to hand out, her spidey-senses started tingling. Coupled with the fact that she truly was ignorant of honest-to-goodness free software, and you have some fairly impressive conclusion-jumping. In a couple of ways, I am guilty of it too."
Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:5, Insightful)
Brought to you by... (Score:1, Insightful)
The Richard M Stalin department. Flaming bystanders since 1983.
Seriously, I don't use proprietary software nor hardware without open specs, but freetards are lame.
Reminds me of the old saying (Score:5, Insightful)
A good lesson (Score:2, Insightful)
This is the kind of misunderstanding that can happen when software advocacy becomes a kind of religion.
A Happy ending (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes the teacher brought the storm on herself. Not by being ignorant of open source but by being rude. This is a good object lesson about email more than anything else.
Helios was perfectly in the right to flame back, especially since he was pretty polite about it considering the pretty nasty slander the teacher was throwing at him. And even being ticked off he protected her identity so she won't have to suffer the consequences of her bad manners. Even better, after talking it over with her he appears to have turned the situation into a win. So high praise for him and since she seems to have learned something positive out of the mess lets give her a break now.
thanks, internet! (Score:4, Insightful)
It was obvious to the intelligent person that this entire situation was made of fail from the get-go. Any time spent analyzing this will likely just make us all dumber. Quit giving it press.
Culture of Fear (Score:5, Insightful)
What a shame that the first thing some people do when told about adults interacting with children is to think of something perverse.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
The Linux PR/Education Department Needs Volunteers (Score:4, Insightful)
You can find a million things online as reference materials, but it's difficult to talk to civilians about why FOSS is a good idea, and how it's put together. People kind of glaze over when you tell them the differences. Often, they don't care and are suspect of anything truly free.
Centralized advocacy could certainly be helpful, as Linux is by its nature, evolutionary and rife with useful anarchy. Still, protagonists need to do some work to evolve the public image of Linux/GNU, FOSS, and why. Half-cocked replies are what turns people off, as they're insecure enough already about computing.
At the end of the day (Score:3, Insightful)
Ignorance is the most expensive commodity in the USA today. And we pay for that ignorance on a daily basis.
Hopefully Ken has been able to push the frontiers of ignorance back just a little. Sometimes it requires a jolt to get that moment moving and I think that both Ken and Karen have learned a lot about jumping to conclusions. Here's hoping that Karen will now become an ally to Ken and his project.
Apology takes strength. (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy is really showing some strength and intelligence, he has made a public apology, and is working with the teacher instead of continuing the rant. The teacher has gotten a serious shaking up from the OSS community (through the blog) and he is doing his best to make a win of this situation.
This could have very easily degenerated into some serious verbal warfare, lawsuits, etc.
While I was interested by the first blog post and kept watch for followup, this second post makes me want to really keep an eye on this guy, actions like this apology are usually a sign of someone that should be listened to.
nice to see (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a good point, and I actually think a reasonable teacher may have reasonably been worried about what was going on. Even one who actually had a basic tech background.
Actually it's quite plausible that tech staff isn't allowed to do this. Maybe the district has a contract with Microsoft, or the school regulations prohibit changing a standard district-wide setup.
How about you reveal the identification of THESE people? I have some things I want to say to them...
Adobe? Google Earth? iTunes???? Free???!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Great, except for the part that Adobe, Google Earth, and most especially iTunes, are anything BUT Free Software. If he had said "free software" it would have been ok, but he deliberately went out of his way to capitalize it like the Free Software Foundation does. I'm pretty sure Adobe has produced absolutely no Free Software (Free as in Freedom, not free as in purchase price). and iTunes is certainly not Free; source is not available, and all the metadata for the iTunes library is locked in a proprietary, binary blob.
it's just shocking that this big-time supposed Free Software advocate doesn't even know how to spell free software!
teach are paid to teach a specific content (Score:3, Insightful)
First, here is a fact. Teaching a job, just like those who sit in office doing nothing more than type code on keyboard. I mean, how hard can it be type random gibberish in a keyboard? Anyone can do it, !. So the teachers first goal is keep the class moving so objectives can be taught, assessed, rethought, and year end tests passed. Do teachers do this to maximize bonuses. Duh, are we idiots, of course. Why are the automakers begging for money right now, to kep 8 figure salaries. Why do we code for any semi-legitimate business, to make the money.
Second, the tools teachers use are the tools teachers use. How many geeks know how to use every OS, every IDE. How many developers know how to write software without an IDE, or can code direct in assembly. Does that make the developers idiots. I might say so, but not really as I have a inch of compassion and am not an arrogant bastard. No one is going to go into an office, give the staff new software to use, and expect management not to react. See point one. Teacher are there to teach content, not be experts at things not even experts agree on. Many serious consider Free OS invalid. In is an opinion. Considering it otherwise refers back to the arrogant bastard.
Third, a classroom is necessarily a controlled environment. While it would be nice to allow kids to do whatever they want, it is not feasible. In most schools, computers are not set up as a redundant array of disposable devices, and if a computer is broken, that generally means several students are denied an education for at least a little while. While teaching *nix is a lofty goal, i wonder if the organization would be there to fix the machines before the next class came in, or if they would just say, hey it is not my problem, and i don't care if some kids loses an education.
This is a classic example of why people hate *nix. Here is a guy who is trying to help the cause, but instead has shown how clueless the cause is. Unlike Dell Foundation, who provides money to teachers to help thing, this guy just seems to attack teachers with no understanding of the context. Even now, there is no acknowledgment of the damage that has been done to the students.
Help students by becoming teachers or mentors, not by attacking them. After all, teachers don't go into your lame ass web development operation and tell you to use real tools.
Re:It simply illuminates a single fact. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Reminds me of the old saying (Score:5, Insightful)
If either side had done some research or better communicating before yelling on the internet, this would have been a non-issue.
In fairness to Starks, if I'd been threatened with having the cops called on me for something perfectly innocuous, I might've responded as he did. In hindsight it wasn't that big of a deal, but her opening salvo was fired from an elephant gun.
Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
The Teacher's Identity (Score:4, Insightful)
Ken makes a big deal about not wanting to name the teacher.
But each successive blog post gives away more identifiable details.
With just the information he has posted, plus the AISD's own website, it is now possible to narrow her identity down to one of 2 people.
I'm sure that's not news to anyone already determined to figure out her identity, but it ought to be a warning to anyone else trying to both talk about a person and keep their identity secret on the web. It is just a real-life puzzle of connect the dots where seemingly tangential information can be enough to put the entire picture together.
Re:Cheaper by the dozen (Score:4, Insightful)
NO!
They should be taught how to use a "word processor", be it OpenOffice.org Writer, Word, WordPerfect, Write, LaTeX (as LyX), HTML, etc. Have each be taught for a week, so they can see that even though things look different, each application has a way of doing the same thing.
Or are you saying that Word doesn't change every few years (like adding in a "Ribbon" instead of menus), so they should be taught a version of Word that is going to be out of date by the time they graduate?
Teach them how to *use* a computer, not how to repeat a specific set of steps, so they don't freeze up when things change slightly.
Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:3, Insightful)
Another conclusion can be to not believe an online blog like it's God's word. I've never actually seen a blog yet that was not one sided on the issues it cared about. This one especially screamed of flamebait, but I'm glad that they were able to open up communication channels and come to an understanding.
Actually, when I read the teacher's original e-mail, my first thought was that Ken Starks had been trolled. It's not that I don't think people can be ignorant of free software, it's that I the teacher had said she "experimented with Linux in college" which made it sound like somebody got greedy with their trolling, but Starks bit anyway.
His reaction was way over the top, but it's cool he calmed down and resumed discussion. Especially since it turned out to NOT be a troll, and that there was an actual teacher, who actually did confiscate frigging Linux CD's. In the end, looks like everyone gained something, even though all of this could have been avoided if the respective parties had kept their composure from the beginning: The teacher could have done a simple googling for linux before sending an inflamatory mail or, failing that, Starks could have not been an asshole with his original reply.
Re:Reminds me of the old saying (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. The teacher still acted out of ignorance and fear. She deserved a good brow beating. Maybe next time she'll recognize her ignorance, and listen to her students instead of jumping to conclusions. Nothing damages the relationship between teacher and student than this kind of arbitrary and capricious exercise of power. Now the kids know that 1) the teacher is an idiot and 2) the teacher values obedience over correctness. This kind of behavior is absolutely not conducive to a constructive learning environment, and I hope that she's ashamed of herself.
Re:Cheaper by the dozen (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, all that I got out of learning Pascal on an Apple ][ was that it helped me get ready to study computer science in college, which has only led me to . . . gainful employment. </sarcasm>
Seriously, I would much rather see them "waste" time teaching programming than have them spend classroom time teaching kids how to use GUI software, which most of them can pick up on their own.
Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Culture of Fear (Score:1, Insightful)
Such suspicions often serve only to highlight the accusers own moral struggle.
Almost everything is legal (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless of how anonymous morons on the Internet acted (and anyone who doesn't realize the Internet is full of anonymous morons probably needs to come into this century), this teacher needs to be disabused of the notion that everything is "illegal" unless specifically allowed somehow by the law. So what if she's not sure something's legal? That's not the question. Unless she's sure it's illegal, she should assume it is legal.
She was way, way out of line in accusing the man of doing something illegal.
I want my kids educated with a belief in liberty, and that is why they will not be educated in today's government schools.
Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just shocked that all literate people in the Western world wouldn't be familiar with any country in Europe. That seems like a reasonable baseline expectation for any adult in Europe or North America.
It may seem reasonable to you, but as an American I can tell you we rarely hear anything about most of the European countries. If you're in a country that hasn't significantly affected anything in our history books or on our news stations, the only time we might even hear the name of your country is during the Olympics, or if some famous person hails from your country. If that's the case, chances are you'd be left out if you asked us to list the European countries. Scrolling down this list [wikipedia.org], I could probably have named about half if I thought real hard. Some of them I'd never even heard of before looking at that list, and I probably won't remember.
Portugal, however, is one of the more well known ones here, if only because they turned down Christopher Columbus' request to fund his voyages here, and their famous explorers are always featured in our typical elementary school curriculum.
Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:2, Insightful)
Dr. Miller's data reveal some yawning gaps in basic knowledge. American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.
Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just shocked that all literate people in the Western world wouldn't be familiar with any country in Europe.
Really? There are many countries in Europe which I know little to nothing about. For example, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Which way round they are geographically I don't know, and culturally I know _very_ little about them. Kosovo, Montenegro, and Macedonia I have little knowledge of, apart from the recent (comparatively) wars. Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan I've got basically 0 knowledge of (though I did meet someone from Georgia a while back, coincidently when the whole South Ossetia invasion was kicking off, so I know a little about Georgia). Slovenia? I wouldn't be able to find it on an unmarked map. Then there's Andorra, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and the Vatican which are all countries technically. And Kaliningrad Oblast, which I just found out about now, which is a part of the Russian Federation I never knew about.
Europe is a complicated place, and not knowing a country in Europe is not a sign of gross ignorance. However, I do agree with you that not knowing about Portugal would be a little weird. They were one of the most important countries on earth a few centuries ago. A hint for those who don't think so - why do you think Brazilians speak Portuguese? That being said, Lithuania used to be a very big force in Europe too, and no one knows about that.
Back on topic.... This teacher seems to not be in the wrong at all. She confiscated CDs that she knew nothing about that were being given out in class. Now she's learnt that they are not harmful, she's is interacting with the OSS community. If I were in her shoes, and even knowing about Linux etc, I probably would have taken similar steps. You just don't know what is on a CD or DVD, and if they are distributed in your class, and something nasty is on them, you will be held responsible. Even if nothing nasty is on them, I can just imagine someone going home and trying to install Linux on their home computer, and there being problems, and parents getting annoyed. When Linux tries to install on my system, for example, it boots up and show 2 unformatted hard drives, and would ask to create a partition on one of them, not recognising any existing partitions. I've got a fakeraid stripe over those two hard drives, which everything of mine is on.
OT on RAID etc : I back up everything I will be _really_ annoyed if I lose, on an external web host in the US, and back on my parent's PC... I actually have very little data which cannot easily be downloaded again if lost. RAID is Useless for home systems. RAID 5 is slower than single disks when writing, and little faster when reading. CPU usage is not the problem with fakeraid 5, it's the infrastructure bottleneck with having the CPU doing parity calculations. Look at the benchmarks people.
Ok, I've just looked at the benchmarks and it seems I'm a little out of date in some cases. Low bus bandwidth is a killer when it comes to RAID 5, and recent consumer motherboards (especially seemingly by Intel) seem to have countered this problem to some extent. I've not seen full analysis yet, so I will reserve judgement.
However, if you just buy a stock motherboard and expect great RAID 5 performance, be prepared to be disappointed. RAID 0 (striping, should be AID 0, there's no redundancy here) will always give you very significant speed increases (ie. double for 2 disks, triple for 3, up to the throughput of the interface), both in reading and writing (though not seek times obviously). If you _really_ want redundancy and speed increases cheap, _not backup_, consumer RAID 1+0 is a good choice in my opinion - it comes close to the performance of striping, with redundancy, at double the HD cost... Is redundancy that important? How OT am I.
Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:4, Insightful)
You think this is a bad thing?
You should have seen the back of my CS classes. A good 50% of the class was playing World of Warcraft on any given day.
Seriously though, Laptops are just one more source of distractions. Could PCs potentially be used to help improve education? Perhaps. Applications such as OneNote are great, I went an entire year without using any paper at all (I emailed my HW in), but I had plenty of trouble paying attention in class and staying off of /.
The current education system in America is by no means perfect, but throwing a bunch of laptops into the mix is not going to help things any. Teachers will still assign busy work, students will still pick on each other, and the majority parents will still be too lazy/busy to ensure their children complete homework assignments.
Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:4, Insightful)
This is straight up terrible analogy. As a guitar player, I can play a Fender and then switch to a Gibson without having to learn anything or adjust my playing style in anyway.
When I switched to Linux, I had to read a huge book and several hundred man pages along the way, and it was a big paradigm shift in how I managed a computer system.
If we are determined to use musical instruments as an analogy, the best way to describe it would be switching from a finger-picking classical style, to a standard rock guitar style of playing. Same instrument, totally different paradigm of operation.
Pretending that switching to Linux does not require a huge investment of time, interest, and effort is not going to help it penetrate the traditional desktop market. Not everyone who doesn't use Linux is ignorant; they're probably just too busy being productive.
Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:4, Insightful)
Two people, the school teacher and the blogger, spend their days as educators. One educating people on the benefits of certain technology, the other kids. For what it's worth, I found the teacher's email to certainly be more threatening than it needed to be given the amount of research she'd done into the matter. And the blogger's response had a bit of bite to it, but it was through much of it making real, valid, informational points. Maybe he shouldn't have indicted all teachers...but it's certainly true that this teacher's attitude isn't exactly unique in the industry either.
What's disturbing to me here is not that the teacher wasn't aware of free software or not up on technology...rather, it's her overreaction to the kids. Everything about the way she handled that situation was wrong, wrong, wrong. Did she put the class back on track and then ask the kid in a non-accusatory way to explain what was going on?
No, she flew off the handle, smacked down on the kid, fired off a threatening, uninformed email...pretty much an out-of-proportion, emotional reaction to a kid being a bit disruptive in the classroom—and being disruptive because he was actually excited about learning something at that.
What's even more troubling is that, even after the fact, she's crying and clearly sorry, but I didn't get a strong indication that she even knew exactly what it was she did wrong so she can fix it and respond more rationally next time. It's hard to say from the little bit of the blogger's follow-up post...but we really, really need our teachers to be adults in the room. The way she initially reacted was more like how kids treat each other.
Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:2, Insightful)
It kind of annoys me to hear people say that Americans are ignorant of geography and other cultures. In my experience, my fellow Americans are no more ignorant than Europeans are. Yeah, Europeans tend to know more about Europe (gee, imagine that), but how many US States and South American countries could the average European name and find on a map? The last time I was in Europe, I spoke to a guy in Norway who didn't know where Florida was, which kind of surprised me. I could understand if they couldn't find, say, Kansas on a map, but Florida is a pretty big vacation destination; you would think the average European would at least know which coast it's on.
I would say that, in general, most people only know about the geography and cultures that are around them and which affect their lives. For most Americans, Europe has no more influence on their lives than China, Japan, India, the countries of Africa and the Middle East, etc, so they have no more knowledge about it than most Europeans know about the US cornbelt.
Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:2, Insightful)
"Why do you have tattoo?""Why not?" Er... that's just not an answer, you do something for a reason, no matter if it's for a logical reason or psychological reason.
Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:3, Insightful)
Also...despite the idea that all American TV is ignorant crap...I present to you some classic performances.
States and Capitals [youtube.com]
Countries [youtube.com]
Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:4, Insightful)
No.
Up through middle school, which is the age of kids we're talking about, children's brains have not yet fully formed a strong self-identity, meaning that they are still being socialized. If an authority figure exhibits certain behavior, children at this stage and younger will respond to it and tend to reflect it. Which means all of your teacher friends, by refusing to give an inch are teaching their children that uncompromising behavior is reasonable...in effect, telling them to take a light year when the opportunity presents itself. That's what you call one o' them there "self-fulfilling prophecy" type things.
The fact that your friends are teachers gives them no more authority to speak on this topic than the teacher that instigated this mess, particularly since they apparently agree with the way she handled it, and I think we all agree that she handled it poorly. The very point I was trying to make is that it's distressing to me, and ought to be to you, is that I couldn't see any evidence that this teacher who's in charge of kids all day didn't seem to have any inkling of exactly how she should've handled it (though it is also equally clear to me that even she would most likely agree she dropped the ball).
The fact that you know teachers doesn't give you any special authority on the topic. I myself claim no special authority either...so with a total absence of special authority to go around, why don't we all just agree to discuss it as equals and assess the points on their own merits and reasonableness. Appeal to authority [wikipedia.org] is always a fallacy, but it's particularly absurd when there is no actual authority present, wouldn't you agree?
Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that your friends are teachers gives them no more authority to speak on this topic than the teacher that instigated this mess, particularly since they apparently agree with the way she handled it, and I think we all agree that she handled it poorly.
That's not exactly what he/she said: to quote the GP, "I don't think overreacting can really come into the picture until we actually know what the class is like." Their point was merely that some school classes are pretty awful in terms of behaviour, and for many teachers the only way to prevent things getting completely out of hand is to rule through uncompromising strictness. Sadly, rational argument is not often something that works very well with a class of rebellious children!
Going back to the original mail the teacher sent (quoted here [blogspot.com]), all she did was confiscate the linux live CD (fair enough, since it was apparently causing a disruption at the time), and then talk to the student about the issue after class. Whilst her preconceptions about free software were deplorable, and her email to the HeliOS maintainer obviously an overreaction, her actual handling of the matter in class seems perfectly calm and reasonable.
The fact that you know teachers doesn't give you any special authority on the topic. I myself claim no special authority either...so with a total absence of special authority to go around, why don't we all just agree to discuss it as equals and assess the points on their own merits and reasonableness. Appeal to authority [wikipedia.org] is always a fallacy, but it's particularly absurd when there is no actual authority present, wouldn't you agree?
From the wikipedia article you just referenced:
"The second form, citing a person who is actually an authority in the relevant field, carries more subjective, cognitive weight. A person who is recognized as an expert authority often has greater experience and knowledge of their field than the average person, so their opinion is more likely than average to be correct. In practical subjects such as car repair, an experienced mechanic who knows how to fix a certain car will be trusted to a greater degree than someone who is not an expert in car repair. There are many cases where one must rely on an expert, and cannot be reasonably expected to have the same experience, knowledge and skill that that person has. Many trust a surgeon without ever needing to know all the details about surgery themselves. Nevertheless, experts can still be mistaken and their expertise does not always guarantee that their arguments are valid."
The fact that the GP knows teachers who have experience of unruly classrooms seems a valid point to me. After all, the GP wasn't suggesting that this was the case with the class in question, only that it was a potential factor that ought to be considered.
Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:3, Insightful)
You see a new OS, you poke around the GUI. You explore the thing and you use your ABSTRACT UNDERSTANDING of what you need to do to help you figure out the details.
The average person doesn't have an ABSTRACT UNDERSTANDING of how an OS [interface] works, any more than they do about a car. Pull here, push there, turn that.
That anyone even considers (let alone carries out) "retraining" between Windows or Office releases is proof that the average person hasn't the vaguest level of "abstract understanding" when it comes to computers.
If you plan a rant, just remember this: (Score:3, Insightful)
.. most people act on what information is available to them at the time. This is a combination of what they know, what they assume and what they fear and experience. Your problem is, you are unlikely to know the extend of either of those things.
The best thing is to query the exact events that you disagree with and ask for motivation, ESPECIALLY if it's second hand like a news report or interview - I've been exposed to the glaring deficiencies in both.. IMHO, you should start from the assumption that the person's actions made sense to them in their personal context, and at that specific time. That doesn't imply an immediate judgement of "right" or "wrong" (and things are never quite that binary anyway) - your question(s) illustrate that your opinion differs and you would like to discuss this.
Only when you have a dialogue and context can you assess if you're dealing with an issue - or that you misunderstood the issue. Oh, and in case you missed it, people have feelings too. The aim is generally to get on with each other as it's so much more constructive..
That is, of course, wholly my opinion, carefully shaped out of the debris of too many fast conclusions. QED, I'd say :-).
Re:Obviously sign of jumping to conclusions (Score:2, Insightful)
It doesn't make a lot of sense to teach basic computer literacy on Linux when 90% of the computers they will encounter are Windows.
*Basic* computer literacy is virtually identical on Windows and Linux. Using a web browser, emailing, basic word processing, basic spreadsheet, organizing files, copy, paste, rename, delete, all manner of basic operations are essentially identical. Plus using Linux you'll have fewer worries about the pupils introducing viruses and other malware or goofing off playing games.
If you go for Windows on the grounds that 'this button is exactly in this place, and this menu entry is always below this menu entry' etc. then the pupils will be completely lost when they have to cope with a different version of Windows.