Intel builds $400 laptop for school desks worldwide

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You're reading what you want to read.

The article is about an ideology being enforced on students. The results sought do not seek to advance eductation or to increase knowledge of computers.

Take the sentence before the paragraph you quote first:
"Rushton said cost is important but likened vendors that give away educational software to McDonald's giving away free food, 'that's a short-term gain'."

In his ideology, McDonald's is no doubt a shorthand for evil. So free educational software might give credence to evil if the software is intended to make money, and so it must be rejected so as not to conflict with the purity of the only correct view.

And look at the first sentence you quote, LU:
"School education should be about cooperation and sharing knowledge..."

Worthy ideas. Not what school education is about, unless of course inculcating an ideology is the school's first goal.


I can see how your recollection of using open source in your CIS studies would make you positively disposed toward the idea. But how old were you? What backgound did you have?

And is this school teaching anything about computer computer languages, about how code works, about how programs are structured?

Or is the lesson only: see, you can look at the code, and that shows the software is good. If you could not see the code, that means the author wants to make money from software, and that's bad, that's very very bad.
Not saying that this transcription is reported, but do you see anything in the story that makes such a "lesson" unlikely?


The other quote shows what may be another primitive attempt to manipulate children.

Quoting:
"The tinker value of Linux is brilliant and kids love to tinker so they organize their desktop in a way most people couldn't understand it."

That sounds like he is carefully avoiding saying it's possible to organize the desktop with Windows, so the students will feel their software is more capable. The Soviets used a similar propaganda approach to try to persuade Russians that the economic system was as advanced as that in the West.

He heightens the approach by implying to the children that they have access to inside knowledge not available to ordinary people, but only because they know Linux. That's similar to the puported advantages of Party membership.

And the effects would be lost if he pointed out that many people are not well educated about computers because they do not want to be or are unable to afford the equipment.

The real world reduces Linux's uniqueness and attractiveness compared to the vision of utopia that he is trying to sell.

After reading that claptrap, I see your summary describing some good and important things people can learn at school. Though they're not the subject of a computer class.

You've persuaded me that despite an excessive attachment to Linux you would have both the understanding and the fairness to teach rather than propagandize. But these children, these victims, do not have the advantage of your tutelage.
Instead they have a zealous apparatchik of a discredited ideology who will only mislead and gull them while denying them exactly the good instruction you would provide.

Posted by: Anton Philidor   Posted on: 05/04/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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