[Fsf-friends] Kerala school training material

[ck raju]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Arun M<arun at gnu.org.in> wrote:
> It is not that text book/curriculum doesnt talk abt other freedoms.
> But effective communication is not happening at school level on
> ideological aspects of free software.
> There is scope for improvement. It would be good some one
> can design interesting activities for children which effectively
> communicate the different freedoms to children. Any way
> it is not an easy task to ensure that majority of 60,000 teachers
> effectively use it.
The IT at School project currently equips a student community to *use*
Free Software under its IT-enabled curriculum. This amounts to
exploiting Freedom Level 0 only. Limiting an education curriculum to
this level is highly inadequate to prevent its retrograde movement
back to proprietary software at a later stage.

However, incorporating exercises in the curriculum that must need the
other existing levels of Freedoms for its implementation, calls for a
different kind of orientation that must be imparted to teachers of
varying disciplines. An education curriculum developed this way can
never change its direction at a later stage. It should only be after
such a loophole-plugged curriculum, that one can convincingly say that
a student community is being *equipped* with the ideals of Free
Software.

Regarding the modalities on the implementation of a system that
exploits all the existing levels of Freedoms may not be as arduous or
tough as is thought out to be. Teachers of our public education system
have an astonishingly high acumen in coming out with exercises from
their own disciplines. Perhaps, all that they need, may be an
invitation !!!

CK Raju