
Linux should be a part of School Education - rbanffy
http://www.linuxfederation.com/linux-part-school-education/
======
simonh
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 in mainstream education, it's going to have
to earn it. This is of course quite possible. Raspberry Pi is a good example
of this. I can see Linux forming a valuable part of a more advanced secondary
school computing curriculum too.

The article is living in the past though. Many children now, and many more in
then future will equate computers with tablets. Some will run iOS, others will
run Android and maybe some might even run Windows. Decisions about which
solution best serves the educational needs of children should be in the hands
of educators, not technological partisans.

~~~
csmithuk
I don't wish to hijack this thread but tying the Raspberry Pi to education is
terrible if you ask me.

I agreed about the Raspberry Pi being the best device for education right from
day one. That was until my father bought my daughter one for her birthday and
I ended up being the resident "fix it guru" for it.

The thing teaches you merely how to jump through funny shaped hoops to get
something working rather than anything realistic or helpful. Most of it is
google-fu and copy and paste. When you do finally get there it's a baron land
of absolutely unrealistic, undocumented crud that can't self-serve. Plus it
barely works and browns out to start with resulting in USB-hub jiggery-pokery
(and that only happens because I actually understand how USB works).

For ref, I have 20 years' of Unix and Linux experience (right down to writing
kernel drivers) and it was painful getting it off the ground so I'm not
approaching it blind.

Being critical (constructively!) of this results in the RPI forum thread being
deleted which in itself an affront and a general recommendation against the
things.

~~~
hoggle
Could it be that you were exited about fiddling with rpi yourself? I don't
have children but I guess it's difficult to deliberately not help them (too
much) solving problems which are inherently interesting to you (grumpy
neckbeardism can't hide that fact, you obviously still care about this).

I think rpi (culture/ecosystem) is still absolutely the best thing, it's
literally the perfect AppleII/C64 for today. Today is also more complex and
more stuff is possible but there is also Unix which at least tries to be
simple.

I've given one of my rpis to my 13 year old neighbour and he is regularly
meddling with it. It's likely that he is also constantly failing but that's
what is needed in order to learn, it certainly was the case for me when I
started (I'm still failing after many years, that's a reality).

Where you could make a difference is just by saying you'll be there to answer
_some_ questions ... now and then. Encouragement and enthusiasm!

~~~
userbinator
> I think rpi (culture/ecosystem) is still absolutely the best thing, it's
> literally the perfect AppleII/C64 for today.

Really? In many ways RPi is far more of a closed, proprietary system than the
common desktop PC.

~~~
hoggle
True we aren't at Apple II level, open hardware would be great but as I said
the whole culture surrounding it as well as the documentation which exists is
really good. It's still a very cool project which succeed to get this ball
rolling, obviously there is room for improvement.

------
danpalmer
My school used Windows for everything. I remember when in year 7 (6th grade) I
was complaining about the computers to my IT teacher, as many do. His response
was "there is another way!".

A few days later, he found me and gave me a Linux live CD with Knoppix on it.
I remember it claimed to have 2GB of software, compressed into the 700MB a CD
could hold. I could put it in my family computer at home, and without
installing anything, changing settings, messing up the computer my parents
used in any way, I could use an entirely different OS, it was amazing!

This was the point at which I realised how software and hardware were truly
separated. A computer was no longer an 'appliance'. The "start button" wasn't
part of the computer, it was just some software that I could replace.

I believe, and have told many people in the years since, that this was the
turning point in my computer education, that has lead to me studying computer
science, and becoming a software developer.

Linux should be a part of school education, because teaching kids that
computers aren't appliances, that hardware and software have a split, and you
can change both, is crucial to developing a real understanding of how they
work.

~~~
durzagott
Ah Knoppix. I remember how blown away I was when I first ran the Live CD; at
that time I had no idea it was even possible. It's a shame that it faded from
popularity once Ubuntu came along.

~~~
danpalmer
I really think Live CDs are one of the best educational tools for those that
already have an interest in computers. Even better now would be one that was
integrated with some online services like Dropbox (or Ubuntu One?) to get some
basic persistence to make things like learning to code more possible on it.

------
binocarlos
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 'old' people can understand such things?

~~~
k-mcgrady
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.

~~~
fit2rule
Until you've learned something, you'll never know how you might use it
productively. I use all of those topics daily because they make me more
productive. I'm sorry you haven't learned just how productive you can be by
understanding these things - but this is no reason to deny the knowledge to
future generations, just because you're ignorant...

------
Sanddancer
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? What are the advantages
compared to FreeBSD, or OpenBSD, FreeDOS, or ReactOS? In an article like this,
you need more than a few vague statements to back it up ideology, you need
evidence and proof that Linux is the best route.

~~~
rythie
Which one is the best tool, when you want to teach how a computer actually
works? or you want to teach them programming?

~~~
Sanddancer
How a computer actually works, probably something microkernel-based, like
Minix. Stripped down, show just what needs to be shown for the lesson at hand,
and much easier to get inside and play with the gears.

Programming? I'd say the OS doesn't really matter. Simple, easy to see initial
result environments like MIT's Scratch, or Logo run on pretty much everything.

~~~
rythie
Scratch is ok at first, but really they need to come out of schoool knowing
something more than that (python/ruby/java etc.)

~~~
Sanddancer
Well, this is for a learning environment for children, so I'd argue getting a
language with a good hook is important. Additionally, both environments also
offer a more interesting language under the hood to poke at -- for scratch,
smalltalk/actionscript, and for logo, the lisp-style language under the hood
-- to teach the more advanced concepts. Give interesting, easy results, but
then use that to build on how to bring in more and more in-depth concepts.

------
radida
No it shouldn't, and honestly neither should programming. Sometimes I swear we
can get so drunk on our own farts that we think engineering is the only
valuable profession in the world, when in reality not everyone needs to be
able to code a rails app if all they want to do is check their Facebook. There
are many other jobs that are important and valuable to society that do not
involve CS - lets just put down the kook-aid.

~~~
rbanffy
If a person does not understand how the world around them works (and most of
it is driven by computers), how can we expect them to adequately operate in
it?

A couple weeks back I remember the case when someone bleached her home because
she feared she could catch the viruses on her computer. There are many people
who do, for the lack of a better word, rituals with their computers because
they can't figure out their wi-fi radio tales some time to grab the local
network signal. They do it because they did it once and it worked and they
have no idea it had nothing to do with the problem they were trying to solve.

A basic understanding of technology is increasingly important.

~~~
ygra
So Linux is somehow immune against people ritualising how they interact with a
computer? They will have a problem one day, google for a solution and remember
that solution. Few will actively try understanding the solution and how and
why it works.

Operating systems don't have magical powers for making users interested in
their internals.

~~~
rbanffy
It's not immune, but chances are that, during the time you are googling
solutions for your problem, you'll have to learn something about how computers
actually work. If the solution points you to a series of "click here, then
here" screens, you won't get any useful insights on how it's done under the
hood because you spent the whole time above it.

~~~
ygra
Suggestions to solve a problem on Linux often are written on a similar level,
it's just that »click here, then here« gets replaced by »edit this part of
that config file and then run this series of arcane invocations«. Oftentimes
you can just copy/paste from some forum and won't learn anything from it.

~~~
rbanffy
And when you edit a config file you are forbidden to look at any part of it
except the one you are editing, right?

------
csmithuk
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.

~~~
venomsnake
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 it to do it so reluctantly. And
currently we are doing the exact opposite in all areas of human knowlege.

~~~
csmithuk
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.

------
joshcrowder
I think this is a great idea. My secondary school (UK) actually had a wealth
of voccational subjects. From the age of 13 I studied Cisco, Red Hat and then
Oracle DB. By 16 I had a CCNA. Oracle Certified DBA and a few vendor
certifications like Security+ and Network+

The real issue was Universities acknowledge them as points towards UCAS so
practically everyone on the course ended up staying on another year or two and
studied other subjects to get the necessary points.

I'm hopeful that one day the system will cater for more subjects but its a
long way way at least in the UK.

------
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.

~~~
rbanffy
> I as a student would think their using some crap computers.

When was the last time you saw a machine running Linux in person?

> unlikely to run into driver issues when connecting new devices.

I am not a grandma and the last device that didn't play nice with my Linux
machines was a prototype Blackberry phone. I somehow don't think it was the
computer's fault.

~~~
Fuxy
Actually my main OS is Arch Linux and i only use windows at work.

While now I rarely run into driver issues that are very serious i still needed
to replace my Wifi card on my laptop to be able to run it in monitor mode
about 1 year ago.

So no Linux still has driver issues with certain hardware. Granted this is a
bad example since it's quite a technical requirement and it's not Linux's
fault but the manufacturers however Linux driver coverage is not as vast as
windows nor do products come with a CD containing drivers for Linux so if it
doesn't work regular users aren't going to care why.

Their going to blame the OS.

------
pritambaral
Oh my (hypothetical) God. For a moment there I thought this was The Linux
Foundation (not federation.)

Coming to the topic at hand: This reeks of fanboyism and fanaticism. While I
personally agree that young people should be introduced to more than Windows
as a part of their edution in computing, this is taking the rhetoric too far.

------
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.

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

That is exactly the model Linux has offered for over two decades now. If it
was such a good model, systems like Windows and MacOS should now be history.

But those proprietary systems still dominate.

~~~
f_salmon
And they still dominate because money still dominates what we do. We run after
the money (= have power over the others), not after what creates sense in our
lives. This is probably the most central value and problem in our culture.
When that will be gone, life will be worth so much more.

------
higherpurpose
I believe all government institutions should be using open source software
virtually everywhere (if something doesn't exist yet, they can build it). That
way the things we build with taxpayer money will be much longer lasting, and
interoperability with future technologies should be a much easier task, rather
than relying on the whim of a private company and its profit incentives.

------
fnordfnordfnord
Linux is _so_ used in education. It isn't used as widely as it ought to be,
but it is most certainly used, and its share is growing. I am a CC instructor
in a vocational program, and each year our students install both Linux and
Windows on our lab PC's. They will use this PC throughout the year to complete
their coursework and are responsible for maintaining it. Graduates of our
program will have installed both operating systems at least twice, often many
more times. I think it is important to promote general computing skills even
though that is not my department's core discipline.

I don't think it is wrong for a college to have a Microsoft site license, but
I do think it is wrong for a public college to require a specific vendor's
products where equivalents exist. I also think it is wrong for a public
college to force students' exclusive use of a single vendor's products.
Computers are mere tools and it isn't the job of a public institution to
choose winners.

------
gmuslera
At least in Uruguay, and by some definition, Linux is part of the school
education. All public schools students have an XO, running Linux, Sugar as
desktop environment, mesh networking, and a bunch of educational apps,
including Scratch (not very explored in class unfortunately) and Turtle Art,
that is also used to explore robotics in schools with the project Butia. But
linux per se is not the central target. But i would trade that for what they
are actually learning, specially at their age. It leaves the door open to
exploration, and so far 2 students from here already won the google code-in
for activities related with Sugar.

------
rythie
The problem here is that (in the UK at least) kids come out of school knowing
nothing about about a computer works or programming - windows/mac/ios/android
increasingly hide this from you. Kids think that programming a computer game
is some trival task and have no idea how to even make the simplest of
programs.

The counter point is that they shouldn't need to know this, but then why do we
teach flower germination? or the causes of the second world war? or
Shakespeare? - I've never had to use these in everyday life.

~~~
csmithuk
It's not all that bad now and wasn't when I was at school (in the UK). During
my time, we had the Acorn BBC Micro to start with, then the Archimedes. These
were both programmers dream machines and code we did, usually plugged into
large Lego machines. After that it diverged into "office studies" as RM dumped
millions of PC clones but there was still Quick Basic and Turbo Pascal
available that was taught at a lot of schools either as a mainstream subject
or through "computer clubs".

Now there was a gap for me but I have children now and they are learning how
to write HTML and basic JavaScript. They are using software to produce video
productions and stop-frame animations, they are even getting instruction from
parents on how to write python. They have Windows desktops, iPads and a few
Linux netbooks. They have it pretty good.

And this is a London primary school with an Ofsted "needs improvement" rating.

It's not all that bad.

~~~
tragic
Well, I'm glad about that. I guess I was the 'lost generation' \- sure, it was
BBC Micros and Acorns at primary, but we basically used them for Chuckie Egg
and Lander respectively - no code. By the time I got to secondary, it was the
'Office Studies' era.

If it hadn't have been, I might have skipped the 7 year continental philosophy
grad school detour. Ah well...

As for Linux in schools, my feeling would be that there should be a room or
two of Linux boxes, and the rest should be Windows - simply because 90% of
computer usage in schools, according to some statistics I just made up,
consists of doing your homework double quick at breaktime or other mundane
uses where it would be better if kids were working with an OS they recognise
from home. People who want to do CS/code type subjects should be taught Linux,
and it should be available to 'computer clubs' etc.

------
NAFV_P
I think I mentioned something similar on _/._ ...

IMO all kids at school should be taught an ugly, difficult language like x86
assembly. Hardly any of them will understand it to a significant degree, but
they will appreciate how difficult working with computers is. They will be
more impressed with say, grep, or the original DOOM game.

Some of those kids will grow up to be somebody's boss, that potentially
annoying, ignorant boss that expects you to juggle knives while tap-dancing in
clogs.

------
derrzzaa
I don't think it's a bad idea. Generally, I'd say skills learnt using Linux
would be fairly transferable to other computer based tasks, regardless of OS.

The article however; utter shite. It's bad journalism.

'do nothing but line the pockets of the publishers', well yes. The company
does profit from this, so? That's not valid argument to not use it in a
schools? It should be approached from a 'look what we can learn from free
tools' angle.

------
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?

~~~
computernovice
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).

~~~
pessimizer
There's a place called the internet. It has information for you.

edit: there's volatile memory and non-volatile memory. Or hundreds of
different types for every place they're used, every purpose, and every brand
name they're sold under, for trolls who miss the forest for the trees.

~~~
computernovice
I wasn't trolling, hence the account name. Its hard to learn about how
computers work because I don't even know where to start. When I typed "types
of computer memory", there are a bunch of different resources. Its difficult
and inefficient to just google every term/acronym I don't know. But thanks
anyways for the answer.

~~~
pessimizer
I apologize: downvotes and 5 minute old accounts make me think troll.

Volatile memory, like RAM, needs a constant source of power to hold
information, but is very fast, so computers use it for calculation, or
information that it will come back to immediately. Non-volatile memory, like a
hard drive, holds information even when the power is turned off.

cache: means a temporary place to hold stuff, and isn't a particular type of
memory.

system RAM: is volatile memory used by the system.

virtual memory: is stuff that was in system RAM but hasn't been used in a
while, so was stored on a hard drive for a moment. Or rather, the place on a
hard drive that you've reserved for that stuff.

hard drive: non-volatile, spinning platters written on with magnetism, like a
cassette tape. It's better than a cassette tape because you don't have to
rewind or fast-forward the entire thing to get to what you want.

RAM: is volatile memory

ROM: is non-volatile memory that is written once, and usually never erased and
rewritten. Many forms of ROM actually can be rewritten, but to the extent that
it's easy to rewrite ROM, the less it counts as ROM.

Primary: another word for system RAM.

Secondary: another word for non-volatile memory, like hard drives.

~~~
computernovice
Thanks for your answers. Its really impressive if you rattled all of that
without even having to refer to anything except previous knowledge. I'm not
sure I quite understand the general interaction between the parts but it
definitely makes 100x more sense now than before.

------
sentientmachine
If young kids are going to learn linux instead of windows, they are going to
need special tutors like this:
[http://www.ktbyte.com/camps](http://www.ktbyte.com/camps)

~~~
gshubert17
I've been teaching high school computing for 10 years, and our regular
classroom and computer lab works fine. Our machines ran Windows XP the first
two years, then we switched to Linux, and are running a Debian distribution
currently.

I don't teach Linux, I teach operating systems generally. Most of my students
use different OSes already: Windows on a home desktop or laptop, iOS or
Android on a phone. Learning Linux for school is no big deal for them.

I teach word processing, not Word or OOWriter; and spreadsheets, not Excel or
OOCalc. In a one-semester course, I introduce and compare OSes, do some shell
scripts to contrast the CLI and GUI, introduce HTML and create some web pages,
then cover word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software. This
course is required for graduation as is a second one-semester course. This
uses Kernighan's book "D is for Digital" [
[http://kernighan.com](http://kernighan.com) ] and covers what any well-
informed person should know about computing: hardware, software, networking,
and data.

I enjoy using Linux as a platform for teaching computing for three reasons:
(1) Linux boxes are cheaper than PCs or Macs. (2) The idea of choosing one's
OS fits well with our charter school's ideas of making one's own educational
choices. (3) Students learn more about the systems they use at home --
Windows, OS X, or whatever -- by contrast with Linux, just as they learn more
about their first language (English, say) by studying a foreign language.

Special camps and tutors are fine, but I don't think they are necessary in
many cases.

------
remon
Friend of author : "I challenge you to write an article promoting Linux that
even Linux fans won't agree with"

Author : "Challenge...accepted"

------
c2u
Where to find the teather?

