[Fsf-friends] Re IT@School

[doxa@sancharnet.in]

Arun,
If the Curriculum is not yet finalised (or can be re-worked) we should also incorporate views on Copyrights/Patents alongwith it. IT education should also contain at least the legal issues that are emerging now, which can be incorporated without controversies. To have a better picture there should also be some kind of impact studies - on the politics of digital divide etc - emergence of a "pay per view society" at a time when the diffusion of Internet is gaining strength  (An excellent link for researchers is at http://www.fepproject.org/policyreports/copyright2dexsum.html)- the rate of obsolesence of hardware & software technology - the role of the Planning institutions in India to promote diffusion of IT, the role of State Govts in promoting software /hardware through Govt policies - all these combined could be an effective curriculum for knowing about Information Technology - rather than forcing lakhs of students and a few thousand teachers to run after learning how to learn using Office tools. 

Institutions of higher engineering education are still pursuing (funded) courses like Software Engineering - that looks at the software development industries through the eyes of a proprietary software establishment - there are hardly any literature available that deals with Free Software software service components (resembling Cathedral-Bazaar ones). One of the arguments of the teachers here was whether it would not be appropriate to teach proprietary software. How can one go against the very philosophy of proprietary software establishments - to remain closed - by trying to open the knot of proprietariness through education. This would be very absurd, since it is paradoxical - on the one side, proprietary establishments want to have all the details of their products/services closed - and on the other side, they want us to learn their techniques. This is a dilemma that proprietary establishments need to overcome. The educational institutions cannot be part of their paradoxical dilemma. (One also needs to be aware of the cases if the patent rights of proprietary software  are trampled upon or tampered with - the new global legislations arriving through GATS/TRIPS/WTO tries to put the onus of proving innocence on the accused - akin to our POTA/TADA legislations - Why should the educational teaching community in Kerala push our 25 lakh student community to such a risk ?

The second argument that teachers forwarded had been on whether their community can ignore the "market share figures" for desktop OS. What relevance is there for such figures if there is a drastic shift in emergence of technologies - ferrying through waters will continue only as long as the bridge arrives - I suppose our issue should be on  can we be one step ahead while designing the curriculum.

After all Information Technology is Techne-o-logy of Information - where techne - stands of "arts and crafts of society" - not just dealing with craft - but "arts" as well, where the injustice (or distribution of justice) of "crafts" gets exposed in due course.

CK Raju,
Thrissur

PS : This could have been taken to Kerala-IT-discuss forum, but wouldn't it be better to get some views on these issues ?