Teacher bans linux

Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by Senlis, Dec 11, 2008.

  1. Senlis

    Senlis Staff Sergeant

    I'm not sure if any of you have seen this, but I thought it was funny and a little sad.

    School teacher bans Linux
    Claims it is illegal
    By Nick Farrell
    Thursday, 11 December 2008, 09:28

    A US school teacher has taken the somewhat stupid step of throwing the open sauce operating system Linux out of her classroom.

    The teacher got her knickers in a twist when one of her students, Aaron was seen giving away free discs for the HeliOS Linux distribution and showing his mates how it worked on his laptop.

    Her reaction was as though the boy was peddling drugs. The unnamed teacher apparently believed that anything that wasn't Windows was illegal and immoral. She confiscated the discs and put him on detention.

    But not satisified with that, she wrote to the HeliOS distributer to complain about his giving Linux to children.

    "I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful," she wrote.

    She said that children look to adults for guidance and discipline and she was going to research to see if she could report the distributer, a bloke called Starks, to the cops.

    "I along with many others tried Linux during college and I assure you, the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods. I admire your attempts in getting computers in the hands of disadvantaged people but putting Linux on these machines is holding our kids back," she wrote.

    Her argument was that the world was ruled by Windows, and it was on almost all computers. "Putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all. I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older verison [sic] of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them..."

    Writing in his bog, Ken Starks said that the letter from the unnamed school teacher showed what an uphill battle Linux people had in dealing with entrenched attitudes.

    He wrote back telling her she should be ashamed for thinking that he was doing anything illegal. Starks told the woman that if she investigated anything she would discover that Linux did what it said on the tin and was a free as-in-cost and free as-in-license operating system.

    "The fact that you seem to believe that Microsoft is the end all and be-all is actually funny in a sad sort of way," he said.

    However he pointed out that the Vole pumps shedloads of cash into her teachers union so it probably was important that she "recommend" Microsoft Windows" or else she would might get reprimanded at the least or fired.

    Stark said that the AISD purchases millions of dollars of Microsoft Software when that money could be better spent on educating our children.

    "A dedicated School Teacher would recognize that fact and lobby for the change to Free Open Source Software and let the money formally spent on MS bindware be used on our kids. A teacher who cared about her students would do that," he wrote.

    Stark told her that she should give Aaron his discs back. He is a brilliant kid and he's learned more using Linux than he ever did using Windows. Those disks and their distribution are perfectly legal and even if he was "disruptive", you cannot keep his property, he wrote.

    Just to make sure he has arranged a meeting with the school's Superintendent.

    "It looks like we will get to meet in his office when School starts again after the holiday.

    "I am anxious to meet a person who is this uninformed and still holds a position of authority and learnedness over our children," Starks wrote.

    It looks like this teacher might have allowed her ignorance about life, the universe and everything to get a wee bit out of control. ยต

    http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/965/1049965/school-teacher-bans-linux


    I am just glad I'm not in the position I have to listen to teachers anymore. Just my boss.
     
  2. Adrynalyne

    Adrynalyne Guest

    I don't buy it, due to the source.

    Entertaining read, though ;)
     
  3. Bugballou

    Bugballou MajorGeek

  4. KingSteve

    KingSteve MajorGeek

    Almost sounds like its too good of flame bait to be true. I never underestimate a persons ignorance though so i guess you never know...
     
  5. Petaluma

    Petaluma First Sergeant

    Could be bologna ... However I live in California..(the land of fruit and nuts)
    I do pt work for a large community org here. I have been with them through 4 different manager (admin) and never a problem till the last one...
    I was called in about 3 months ago and told that "I should stop causing a disruption within the well formed infrastructure we are trying to present"
    What does that mean ?--management double talk

    I committed the sin of telling everyone about open office.(She thinks it is pirated offshoot of MS office :-o:-o

    The manager did not give me a chance to explain myself --just told me if I continue to be disruptive(only handing out links to dl) then my services would be terminated. ( oh well did not pay well anyway)rolleyes

    Fast forward 3 months ----- The admin has gone on to screw up another company and me... I just installed Ubuntu on my new mangers laptop and we are discussing implementing several open source projects. Oh and I got a raise for being proactive within the company......LOL:-D:-D
     
  6. DavidGP

    DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

    Inquirer nearly as good as The Onion for news.


    Luckily where I work doesnt ban Linux as I installed Fedora and Kubuntu onto some PCs as test today, one need a live CD to help recover a Windows partition, both OSes work well together and have pluses going for them, but for compatability Windows is the market leader and has ease of use for all out of the box.

    But cannot take much stock in this story as if the teacher was not a tech or IT teacher, then they wont know what it likely was, many have specialties and run with the government set curriculum, and likely in middle school its using common used OS in Windows as most kids parients will have this OS at home.

    I believe schools should teach both for fairness, but this is a government education issue or for parents to teach their kids a different OS (out of every 10 parents how many can use Linux?), while many here use Linux, including me, and that blog is a linux community so its baised by nature in comments.


    *I am Windows biased and make no appologies for being so, believe at this moment in time its best option for masses and novice PC users*
     
  7. Rikky

    Rikky Wile E. Coyote - One of a kind

    How come the teacher is unnamed but the student is Aaron,that sounds backward for something like this.

    I'm calling BS aswell,too good to be true.

    EDIT One of those stories that linux users love,they can pass it around and stroke each others ego's as to how smart they are for using Linux.
     
  8. BoredOutOfMyMind

    BoredOutOfMyMind Picabo, ICU

    Ken claims now that "Karen" called him... http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/

    blogs give anyone 4 seconds of fame, Forums 15 seconds. .

    His desk is way too neat for him to be productive!

    [​IMG]:p
     
  9. Senlis

    Senlis Staff Sergeant

    I wonder why theinquirer.com is such a bad soure for news. is it the comedy they add to the articles that makes it seem they aren't checking their sources properly?
     
  10. Lev

    Lev MajorGeek

    Bet that made a mess all over the classroom walls.....nice to know The Inquirer proof reads well ;)
     
  11. Fred_G

    Fred_G Heat packin' geek

    Yeah, Lev got it there. I mean open sauce? Heck no! I am not down with open sauce. I want to know who made the sauce and what type it is. :-D
     
  12. I think its worcester sauce..........papers and teachers all gone crazy with too much power at times.........:):)
     
  13. Lev

    Lev MajorGeek

    Had it been Tabasco sauce it would have been hot off the press news :-D
     
  14. Adrynalyne

    Adrynalyne Guest


    Bias and rumors fuels many of their articles.
     
  15. Senlis

    Senlis Staff Sergeant

    Where do you guys go for tech news then? (other than here of course)
     
  16. KingSteve

    KingSteve MajorGeek

    slashdot
     
  17. KingSteve

    KingSteve MajorGeek

    slashdot.org

    sorry, forgot the .org part.
     
  18. DavidGP

    DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

    If you took away the anti Microsoft stance ( and the childish calling of MS = Vole ) they have and if they reported the news unbiased then it would be a great source of info, while many of the stories are fine, some have a twist to them, so worth getting a second opinion on them imho.

    Majorgeeks.com
    Neowin.net
    Hexus.net
    Winbeta.org
    news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/default.stm
    slashdot.org as mentioned are all good news sites, plus I read many others, plus some blogs as they hold great news info on new products etc
     
  19. Lev

    Lev MajorGeek

  20. Senlis

    Senlis Staff Sergeant

    Thanks multiple Administrators for your helpful links. :dood
     

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