Re: [school-discuss] Indian Education system : forcing schools touse Micro$oft and Oracle.

[Lincoln Peters <sampln@sbcglobal.net>]

On Thu, 2004-11-04 at 23:52, Arjun Asthana wrote:
> The schools' syllabus in India is decided by Central Board of Secondary 
> Education. The IT syllabus clearly specifies use of proprietory software and 
> the question papers (for examnation) are also focussed on M$ and Oracle.
> 
> Same is the position of AICTE, which specifies syllaus for technical 
> institutions.
> 
> Our efforts to locally promote Linux in schools have been hit by this factor, 
> where teachers have expressed inability to use Linux/OSS due to the syllabus.
> 
> I was told by one of the people earlier involved with CBSE that the original 
> syllabus carried terms specifying 'alternate', 'similar', 'any other' at 
> appropriate places so that other platforms could be used for teaching, but a 
> 'clerical' error magically lead to the removal of these terms from specific 
> places.
> 
> What hjas been the experience of other contries? Have the financial muscle of 
> the big vendors succeeded in armtwisting the education authorities?

In my school district (in California, USA), I found that people were
often interested in free/open source software, but were unwilling to
make the switch from proprietary software.  I was able to successfully
distribute about 60 OpenOffice CD's to students and teachers last year,
but I don't know how many of them were actually used.

In your case, it wouldn't surprise me if proprietary software interests,
having seen the threat posed by open-source software, have lobbied your
government to use proprietary software to the exclusion of everything
else.

---
Lincoln Peters
<sampln@sbcglobal.net>

Huh?