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Linux should be a part of School Education

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Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#21

Post by cabalamat »

simonh wrote: post #4

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…

> How many of them would ever see a PC running Linux again?

> Many children [...] will run Android

Care to reconsider your argument?

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#22

Post by csmithuk »

venomsnake wrote: post #11
csmithuk wrote: post #5

Windows should be a part of School Education! MacOS should be a part of School Education! 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…

I agree. The point was slightly sarcastic.

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.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#23

Post by f_salmon »

> Linux should be a part of School Education

The concept of "open source" should be part of school education.

We don't need thousands of proprietary version of the same thing. That's a HUGE waste of resources on literally every level.

All we need is 1 version that is accessible, clone-able, and modifiable for everybody.

Imagine where humanity could be today if we had used that approach right from the start and for every single product out there.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#25

Post by pessimizer »

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?

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#26

Post by [deleted] »

Sanddancer wrote: post #8

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?…

[deleted]

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#27

Post by rds2000 »

cabalamat wrote: post #21
simonh wrote: post #4

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…

> How many of them would ever see a PC running Linux again? > Many children [...] will run Android Care to reconsider your argument?

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.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#28

Post by Fuxy »

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.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#29

Post by beachstartup »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #18
binocarlos wrote: post #9

Rather than this OS or that OS - I really wished someone at school had taught me: * how DNS works * the process model with stdin,stdout,env vars + cmd args * streams - text or otherwise * protocols like HTTP but what they actually did on the wire Every OS uses the above list and so even for a young child - you can teach by example. Surely using nice fluffy diagrams it would be worth trying this to find out that only…

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.

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.

thanks.

Re: Linux should be a part of School Education

#30

Post by computernovice »

pessimizer wrote: post #25

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 o…

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).

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