[Fsf-friends] IT education in Kerala schools and GNU/LInux

Tue Aug 19 22:47:19 IST 2003

Arun M said on Mon, Aug 18, 2003 at 08:13:54AM +0530,:
 > Syllabus was corrected and rewritting the text book was done after that.

That  is a  major victory  for free  software.  Hats  off to  you guys
working for inclusion of free s/w in ITatSchool project. This deserves
better publicity. 

Hey!!! unless  you guys speak out,  how are others to  know about your
achievements??? I guess that most of us  are under the impression that
things are remaining static for past 6 - 8 months. At least, I am.

Why don't you  get the syllabus published on the  IT at school project
site??? (the site contains a lot of flash, which is non-free, but that
is a different matter altogether).

 > Issue  now  is   Govt  is  not  willing  to   provide  training  to
 > teachers. This needs to be addressed by us.

Sure.   That can  be worked  out. How  does the  govt.  decide  on the
training?

 > Regarding withdrawing  the text book,  it will be too  difficult at
 > this stage, for various reasons.

No body is asking for that. 

I just pointed out that if somebody decides to make it an issue of it,
hard work  by you people  will go down  the drain if portions  on free
software  was  included  when  the  syllabus  does  not  mention  free
software.   A text  book containing  OpenOffice.org when  the syllabus
specifically  mentions, say, 'abiword'  would be  hard to  justify, or
rather, easy  to withdraw,  so far as  the proponents of  non-free are
concerned.

I still fail to get why SVK felt that I am criticising the entire text
book committee.

-- 
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+

  Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M.,                   
  'NANDINI', S. R. M. Road,               
  Ernakulam, Cochin-682018,               
  Kerala, India.                          

  http://in.geocities.com/paivakil         

+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+