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Comment by Loughla | Hacker News Reader

>especially google, which already infests governments & schools

Working in schools, I can assure you, google classroom and all the accompanying apps are not some cabal from the schools. They're free. That's the incentive.

Also, I would ask, what is the other option? That the government builds and maintains specific programs for every function? How okay are you with taxes going up quite a bit? Because they will need to in order for the public sector to compete for talent with the private sector.

My opinion is that these sorts of things don't need to be electronic, as paper is more secure anyway. But maybe I'm a Luddite. At the very least, I am privileged enough to have a career that allows me the flexibility to interact with government agencies if I need to. If I was still working retail, I could see how online services would definitely be a plus in time saved.

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yes, the government should generally build the software they need to support essential functions for the populace, which certainly can include open-source/collaboratively-developed software, even the paid kind. we shouldn't allow government to decide to pay for software by gutting individual privacy and liberty. that goes counter to the spirit of our inalienable rights.

also, "taxes will go up" arguments are at best naive. taxes (amounts/rates) have little correlation with supporting the essential needs of government. they're primarily employed to generate leverage, (unfair) economic gain, and power. public sector pay is uncompetitive because politicians and bureaucrats don't find competitive pay to serve those purposes.

but yes, paper is perfectly fine technology for most educational purposes, relatively secure and private intrinsically.

Due to how education authority is distributed and entrenched in the US, it is exceptionally unlikely they have the competency to build the software tooling they need for essential functions. Khan Academy tried to provide this service, but it appears there's been very little uptake. It's even worse if you’re a startup, with horrendously long and tortured sales cycles and your contract at the whim of career admins and politicians.

Charter schools as the developers or consumers of such software, as well as homeschoolers, would see better outcomes imho. Retooling public schooling apparatus is a lost cause (although there is likely some small impact to be realized if you're a technologist in a position where you can deliver disproportionate impact to your local institution).

yes, no doubt the challenges are significant, given the centrality of public education in local, state, and even national politics, but policy (slowly, piecemeal) got us into this problem, and perhaps only policy (after a long cycle of learning & debate) can get us out.

the main point is that a key (hopefully self-evident) principle is that our liberties shouldn't be for sale at any price. if that means states/localities need to develop software (and software development as a competency), so be it. political winds can change.

but as has been pointed out, it's not even clear that we really need much new technology, when existing tech seems to be perfectly satisfactory, if unexciting. the mass distance-learning experiment we just experienced seems largely a failure. turns out learning, while central, is only one of many educational concerns, and computer-based learning is at best augmentative, not primary (unlike, say, school administration systems).

They're not free. They're certainly not "free" as in they respect my freedoms, nor the freedoms of any child or parent that has to dirty themselves with it. It might not be a cabal with the schools, but surveillance capitalists are certainly a cabal unto themselves; a nasty and greedy cabal which has no place near public institutions.

As schools attach themselves to these incredibly abusive products, I sincerely hope the publics' opinion of schools drops with exponential relation.

Chromebooks are already widespread within US schools, and opinions generally seem to be positive.

They shouldn't be widespread. I will continue to hope that schools which mandate their use fall ever further out of favor. May the management be ever engaged in fights for public funding, and their allotments continue to shrivel.

I'd love to see a wholesale turnover in all establishments that cozy up to the likes of Google and Microsoft.

That hasn't happened because they're cheap, effective, and relatively easy to manage. Unless Google fucks things up big time, they're probably going to be around for a long time.

Unless Google fucks things up, or citizens start making bureaucrats' lives much harder.

I'm 100% in favor of people going directly to teachers, principals, counselors, on and on up until enough additional busywork is piled on top of these civil servants that their choice is a perpetual drowning in outrage or a removal of abusive technology.

It shouldn't be that hard to accomplish; possibly even just ten to fifteen people per school, applying pressure wisely, ought to make for effective burnout.

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