Hacker News Reader

Comment by spunker540 | Hacker News Reader

What about music classes that teach Garageband or more professional recording software like Logic or Ableton? Or art classes that teach Photoshop? Should they even be allowed to use Windows or Mac OS X? How about Google Chrome or Safari? Google search? It seems rather arbitrary to feel so strongly about word processor choice but not anything else.

View on HN

>Garageband or more professional recording software like Logic or Ableton? Or art classes that teach Photoshop

Yes, schools should stop specifically teaching the UI of certain proprietary applications.

>Should they even be allowed to use Windows or Mac OS X?

Public funds should not be used to purchase those operating systems. If they were donated, they can be allowed.

>How about Google Chrome or Safari? Google search?

Those are already free, and there aren't full 5 credit courses on "How to use Chrome" like there are for MS Office and Photoshop.

I don't think donated software should be allowed either. It's a brilliant investment for companies to donate their software to schools and almost everything has a "free for educational purposes" version.

It seems like you are recommending teaching something which is entirely different to what the vast majority of learners will come into contact with on a regular basis in their future lives. That is not useful and it does not prepare people for the real world.

In the United States, it is the done thing to file taxes through a proprietary software portal (as the result of extensive lobbying). [Yes, this state of affairs is a travesty] Should schools, therefore, avoid teaching people how to file taxes?

> It seems like you are recommending teaching something which is entirely different to what the vast majority of learners will come into contact with on a regular basis in their future lives. That is not useful and it does not prepare people for the real world.

Many free software replacements for proprietary software are quite similar to the locked down alternatives. Maybe if people learned a different program in school then they would continue to use it in their future lives. That would increase the number of users and the chances that other people would encounter it in the real world.

Proprietary software encourages dependence on a single company and discourages learning, the primary goal of an education institution. Realistically it is near impossible to live today without encountering proprietary software, but educational institutions should be more responsible about how they frame students' relationships with it.

> In the United States, it is the done thing to file taxes through a proprietary software portal (as the result of extensive lobbying). [Yes, this state of affairs is a travesty] Should schools, therefore, avoid teaching people how to file taxes?

Areas where centralization and high levels of security are important such as tax filing, flight booking, and online banking will likely use proprietary software for the foreseeable future. Rather than taking the strict stance that these activities must not occur on school grounds they should teach students how to protect themselves from potential harms of proprietary software (e.g. by running programs in isolated environments).

> Areas where centralization and high levels of security are important such as tax filing, flight booking, and online banking will likely use proprietary software for the foreseeable future.

Financial institutions, and government institutions, etc. will mostly be using proprietary operating systems for exactly this reason. By not teaching how they work (to a novice/intermediate level, not kernel specifics!) you preclude your students from taking most roles in such organisations. I'm not saying it's good that public services rely on private business, but it is naive to ignore it.

Why do you feel that way? if photoshop was free, would you be okay with it?

Do you think kids should only be exposed to free software for their whole lives and then enter the real world with no hands-on experience with anything enterprise?

Should they be allowed to require reading copyrighted books in English class? Or only public domain books?

What about their graphing calculator? Only open source graphing calculators?

Why are you using garage band in a music class? That sounds like using ms paint in a graphic design class.

That is not the point. Understand what OP is trying to say.

Photoshop is legitimate for graphic design - right? Should we stop teaching that at school? Or Autocad or its ilk.

Public schools should not have a graphic design class, nor a CAD class. Unless you are talking about outside of the USA and the notion that all schools are public.

What? I definitely learned Photoshop, CAD, Dreamweaver, Office (and several PCB design software suites I no longer remember) when I was in a USA high school 10-14 years ago. My younger siblings learned far more than that too a few years later (accounting software, Eclipse, and a video editing application if I recall correctly). That's completely normal depending on what electives you take.

Am I misunderstanding this comment?

Why not? We had both of those at my high school (in suburban DC) and they were well enrolled and enjoyed by those who took them. They were electives - we all still took a full load of social studies, hard science, math, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com