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LinuxHi,
I will be writing petition to my government (Poland) to try to get them to ban Windows at schools. I believe it should be illegal to force children to use systems that are paid and use children’s data for AI and advertising.
Maybe you will do it as well? Let’s end this insane practice.
and Google (classroom, chromebooks etc). Treating children as products is abuse.
Also ban Google. I think we should ban any schoolwork in required courses that requires students to agree to any third-party EULAs, such as Google account and Windows OS. For selective courses, considering the de facto status that many fields don't have a mature enough open source software, banning is a bit exceeding proportionality IMHO. And offering Windows computer is probably ok as long as it's not the default choice IMHO.
In my freshman year in the Electrical Engineering department, I took a required computer programming course, the course that I supposed it to be most aware of the existence of GNU/Linux, free format, and so on. However, it uses Google Sheets for homeworks and demands a Google Drive link of an exe for final team project and YouTube link for presentation. When they let students evaluate each other, I just got a bunch of exe, half of which doesn't even open in Wine.
I also think they every school should offer NextCloud. Otherwise when team work occurs, Google Drive/Docs/Slides/Sheets is the de facto only choice.
BTW, I think LaTeX with git is more customizable and extensible and should be taught instead of teaching MS Office stuff. I actually take all my notes in LaTeX in a GitHub repo and do reproducible compilations.
There's a brilliant man who just gave a talk at Defcon who had previously given a talk at TED where he said we should ban all computers in school. 1 sec, I'll get the link
Cliff Stoll! I highly recommend watching his Defcon talk as well. https://youtu.be/Gj8IA6xOpSk
Banning computers in school wholesale is about as retarded as a fucking take as you can physically get.
That's basically the equivalent of saying we can't fix stupid so we might as well just kill every stupid person. It's just the most extreme fix to a problem that just creates more problems and hurts the victim even more.
At most I could see an argument saying that computers have to be stupid like they were in the 90s. Anything that says on you more than win98 shouldn't be allowed. But computer skills are an absolutely mandatory skill set.
Oh man I love Cliff Stoll. His completely over the top hyper TED talk with his notes literally scribbled on his hand. 🤓👌❤️
I wouldn't "ban Windows at school" as a whole but I would:
- ban schools from installing windows in school computers
- teachers and students can still use it on their own computers, if they want
- ban teachers from requiring windows-only software
- regardless of what you use at school, teachers would often require MS office or Adobe for homework, which would force students to use windows at home
Fully agree.
I would also ban Ai in schools. Some teachers force the children to use Ai.
While I agree with the petition, it shouldn't be limited to Windows, it should be about software freedom...
https://www.gnu.org/education/edu-why.html.en
https://www.gnu.org/education/edu-schools.html.en
That actually makes a lot of sense, if you remove concepts such as "but Windows is already customary here" from your head. From scratch, you'd never want to do this.
If such a petition exists for the Netherlands or EU-wide, I'd sign and subscribe/support.
Ironically, the US is practically already off MS in schools and has been for a while but it's Mac and Google Suite that took over. I literally had a college student in my class ask "What is Excel?" as it was listed as an option to conduct calculations.
It's not better, but I thought that was funny. Big reason that happened, btw, Apple gifted whole computer labs to schools back when it was trying to get market share in the 90s, and now Google does likewise with Chromebook. Too bad there isn't a Linux organization with enough money to do something like that, as it's much more effective than banning something.
I work in edtech, and the current landscape is something like 55% ChromeOS, 25% iPad, 15% Windows, 5% Mac. I might have the exact percentages wrong, but I'm pretty sure about the order. The old Mac advantage from the gifted computers is basically gone, and though a lot of primary schools do give students iPads, Windows isn't really gone gone; a lot of edtech apps are either web-based or built for Windows. You're right about Google undercutting the market with ChromeOS, though.
Yeah, I figured Chromebook is just the next generation of this stuff and the mac gifting is probably on decline now that they've got their market share. It's good to hear an edtech perspective though. It's all about cost at this point, I imagine...
This and banning Windows is silly... Ban the functions you don't want... That way other OSs are lumped in or the OS can be configured appropriately.
Chromebooks and iPads for kids here just made better (brain rot) consumers that know less about computers than their parents and even grandparents.
I'm all for pushing to Linux or de-shittified systems, but "banning Windows" doesn't suffice and the bigger alternatives have the same problems and/or worse.
It will at least help getting rid of Windows dominance. It is not just about pushing Linux itself, but creating a market with many operating systems. While not ideal for the school, because its preferable to have Linux as the default, still better than everyone using Windows.
Good luck!
You may already be aware but perhaps some of the rationale from these projects could help bolster your argument:
https://eu-os.eu/
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/petitions/en/petition/content/html?petitionNumber=0729%2F2024
https://www.numerique.gouv.fr/sinformer/espace-presse/souverainete-numerique-reduction-dependances-extra-europeennes/
Thanks! I will use it 😃
I was thinking this 20+ years ago and it makes me sad that Windows is still treated like a product worth using. My work machine is my most hated device in terms of software. Such garbage.
In the US we have a law that says we must keep student records confidential. Yet at my school our email for both faculty and students is provided by TinyFlaccid. I know for a fact that they are scanning and indexing all of that email because that's the only way they could make reply suggestions. They also have copilot enabled and there is no way to turn it off.
I'm not commenting to pick on you but because I think it's really important that people understand the details of laws so that they can make informed choices. People often think they have more rights or protections than they do, and they might not make the same choices if they knew otherwise.
If you are referring to FERPA, the decision about whether an email is an education record depends on the content and the context for which it is used. I don't think it would hold that all emails from an educational account are educational records. ( https://www.aalrr.com/EdLawConnectBlog/a-reminder-that-emails-may-be-education-records )
From the above and specific to whether an email itself can be a record (when there was a paper copy on file)
The court held the electronic messages themselves were not “education records” for purposes of FERPA because, while they related to the student, they were not “maintained” by the educational institution.
(Please note: "the decision was unpublished and therefore cannot be cited.")
Getting a little more specific: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-34/subtitle-A/part-99/subpart-D/section-99.31
An educational agency or institution may disclose personally identifiable information from an education record of a student without the consent required by § 99.30 if the disclosure meets one or more of the following conditions:
B) A contractor, consultant, volunteer, or other party to whom an agency or institution has outsourced institutional services or functions may be considered a school official under this paragraph provided that the outside party—
(1) Performs an institutional service or function for which the agency or institution would otherwise use employees;
(2) Is under the direct control of the agency or institution with respect to the use and maintenance of education records; and
(3) Is subject to the requirements of § 99.33(a) governing the use and redisclosure of personally identifiable information from education records.
So having access to and using the information in the emails is not necessarily a violation so long as the personally identifiable information is not redisclosed.
Schools have a duty to ensure that the access is for "legitimate educational interests" which is subjective but I could see email tools or copilot being argued as meeting that.
I guess we won't know until someone challenges it 😉
I'm aware of all of that, but wasn't looking to write a novel about it.
I am of the opinion that feeding students' information to AI and to advertising algorithms is not a legitimate educational purpose. Particularly when hosting your own email that doesn't do that is so trivially simple.
ETA: btw, my nickname is potateo. You could say that's an arcane spelling of potato!
Having worked at an email provider before, I can assure you that hosting your own email is not, as you put it, "trivially simple." The number of spam filters that sit between every server is insane, and they're all controlled by third parties that, almost universally, deem any server hosted on a residential IP address block to be spam. Even medium-sized commercial providers get blacklisted every so often and have to appeal to the filter providers to get back in business. Hosting it yourself is almost guaranteed to mean that nobody ever gets your emails.
This is a nice idea. Wish you good luck!
In the US they use Chromebooks, not really any better but they do have Linux under the hood.
I wouldn't worded as "ban windows" (monkey hand they give the ipads), but as implement Linux on the curriculum
I disagree. While it would be correct in some way, it would be a different political movement.
With "let's introduce Linux", it's easy to stop mid-way and too early. For example, at 1 hour per week for 1 semester once during the whole school.
With "ban Windows [from school computers and as mandatory software]", the political agenda is clear and the technical goal is clear. And the benefit is clear, too.
American mindset, and probably more broadly speaking, "ban thing" when thing isn't widely understood (to be bad, or even in general) usually gets reactionary backlash because people don't like when decisions are made for them or options (even those they're unaware of) are either taken off the table or forced upon them. It's teeing up Microsoft to spend a few bucks on a country song and cowboy character ad campaign to brush the issue off.
"New thing better" doesn't always work well either because people need a reason to change when things seemingly already work as-is. Leading with outrage is unfortunately the better way to win over people who aren't going to make an effort for themselves to investigate the problem. Tell them why they should be angry, why Microsoft is a threat to their children, etc and then, if you can convince them, is when you add "...and that's why we should ban MS products." Even that is still insufficient without a clear course of action. If the solution isn't drop-in and painless, it's going to disrupt the education of the generation when the change is made. The argument needs to be compelling enough to worth unsettling the status quo.
Last up, our education system is headed by a carny. Our administration swung the doors wide open for Mecha Hitler. Our president loves the uneducated and the uneducated clap like a pack of trained seals when they hear it. Even if Microsoft failed to backroom deal or blackmail their way into maintaining their stranglehold, you'd have to be on Elon levels of ketamine to believe the current admin would adopt open standards or invest the US equivalent of Venezuela's Canaima Linux. We'd get gaudy gold TrumpTops preloaded Grok, nationalist propaganda and government spyware.
All that isn't to piss on the parade. I'm for open standards, open operating systems and improving technical literacy while stripping away the invasions of privacy and stopping the dumbing down of our youth. I just think "ban thing" is only ever going to appeal to bandwagon radicals and the folks that already agree with you. If you're not winning over the opposition (and more importantly the idiots who don't even know they're opposed until their indignant inner sleeper cell is activated by the word "ban") you're in for a losing fight.
As long as 90% of businesses use it on their desktop it makes sense to teach. Using windows and the common software (photoshop, excel etc.) on it is basically a life skill at this point in time.
I agree with your premise though.
I guess it could be argued the computer proficiency skill is transferable (from Linux at school to Windows at work) as long as there is a significant overlap in the available software, desktop presentation, workflow and control conventions.
One example where it for sure doesn't work is gimp to photoshop. If you wanna know why, go dig out instructions for how to draw a circle in each one. Or try recreating one of the many effects from PS in GEGL. - The workflow is so fundamentally different that if you know one software, it will actually hinder you learning the other, because your intuition will mislead you and you'll be constantly frustrated (which actively hinders learning. There are studies on that)
They don't need to teach "windows" or "excel". Working with an "operating system" and a "spreadsheet" is the real value. One can quickly pick up any equivalent technogy as they need to. There's no good reason to stick to the company that happens to have a monopoly at the time. In fact, it's better for society that they don't.
As for photoshop or any media editing program, I've never learned that in school anyway. That was just not a thing in any school around where I grew up. Maybe I missed out, but I'd say that elementary and high school curriculums are already pretty busy to focus too much on that kind of work. IME teenagers usually get into that kind of software at their own time and interest. I was into video editing and 3d modeling, but that was never in the curriculum, nor would i advocate for it to be.
Companies use windows at work, because it was used in school. Rather than adapt employees to Linux, better pay for windows (many go for very old and dangerous versions to spare money, and that threaten economy, but it is cheaper).
If workers know Linux, companies would make them work on Linux, rather than pay windows and adapt workers to windows.
As long as Linux is more likely to prevent massive hacks of companies'datas, the gouvernment should push for Linux at school in order to push companies toward their own safety...
No idea where are you from but in Poland there is no way someone teaches these programs at schools. We teach gimp on windows so no problem here.
I went to school in germany, we had a generic computer class for a semester, where we started with basic controls left, right mouse click, middle click to close apps, tripple click to select a row of text, f2 for rename, f10 create new folder, deleting files, installing and uninstalling software etc.
And even here Linux diverges. Middle click pastes your clipboard and only rarely do apps like pdf viewers support tripple clicking.
Later we learned photoshop, word, excel, powerpoint, internet explorer and how to use the powerful features in google search, like quotes, +, -, site: etc. And I must say, it proved to be extrenely useful. I constantly see people around me struggle with those tasks and I'm thankful for my school teaching me.
I moved all my PCs to Linux ~5 years after graduating and it sure was a long grindy struggle of frustration and accepting bad compromises. I tried using gimp for university assignments and it was a huge PITA. Touched a mac for a week and it was equally full of friction to learn and work with.
What I want to say is - I'm sure the re-learning is a similar struggle in either direction. So if you want to prepare students for the real life, it makes sense to learn the software they will most likely encounter in their real worklife. I'm sure most polish design companies use photoshop and illustrator on windows or mac systems instead of gimp and those school students will have a harder time getting into it.
It's interesting to hear Photoshop and GIMP have diverged so much! I haven't used Photoshop in 20 years but when I initially made the switch it was pretty simple. I guess photo processing has changed a lot in that time, eh? 😅
