[Fsf-kerala] Free Software in Higher Secondary

[Renni P Mathunny]

Hello everyone,

I hope most of you are aware about the use of proprietary software in higher
secondary classes following Kerala Government syllabus. (CBSE is no
exception, they also suggest using proprietary software.)

It is very sad that the students, who have learned free software in high
school classes are forced to learn/use proprietary software in higher
secondary.

Can we begin a campaign for revising the Computer Science and Computer
Application Syllabus of Higher Secondary classes – atleast to replace the
proprietary softwares with equivalent Free Software tools? There is no doubt
that the whole syllabus is to be revised. Outdated/obsolete tools/languages
like Visual Basic 6.0 and ASP are still taught in Higher Secondary.

The software/tools to be learned by students in higher secondary courses,
are listed below. There are three different streams in Computer/IT --
Computer Science for Science stream, Computer Applications for Commerce
stream and Computer Application for Humanities stream. All of them are
included in the following list.

1. C++ (Turbo C++ is usually used as the IDE)
2. SQL (MS-Access / Oracle / MS-SQL Server)
3. Visual Basic (Visual Basic 6.0)
4. HTML / DHTML / Scripting Languages (VBScript / JavaScript / Perl / CGI /
ASP / JSP)
5. MS-Office
6. DTP (Adobe Page Maker)
7. Text Editors

The syllabus did not mention anything about using Free software. But it
suggests the different proprietary softwares that can be used.

Regards,
Renni
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