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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

You're not wrong, but I've sat in an elementary school classroom while a teacher was doing the computer class.

It was already difficult with a class attempting to follow instructions in a single OS; if a teacher had to be giving three sets (at least three!) of instructions to a bunch of kids, they realistically wouldn't get anything done in the 50 minutes they have each week.

I could see a proposal to using one trimester for Windows, one trimester for Mac and one for Linux - because it genuinely is kind of hard to switch from one to the other, and it would be useful if kids had a basic familiarity with all three. (Though, how do you choose which distro to use for Linux? Or do you just make them walk uphill each way on the command line?)

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You work almost exclusively with the common ground, the common conventions. Teach them file managers, "programs" in a very general sense, windows (being able to resize and position them, the window buttons (to close, maximize, etc.), window menus, etc.), the concept of saving a file from a program, file extensions. You take little pauses to explain how things may differ slightly between OSes.

You take the same approach with programs (web browsers as opposed to simply Chrome, spreadsheets as opposed to simply Excel, etc.).

Once they have the common ground, you can expand on differences, but always OS- and program-neutral, because schools shouldn't be a marketing tool.

The idea is that students should be able to use any computer in a very basic extent. It doesn't take much.

> (Though, how do you choose which distro to use for Linux? Or do you just make them walk uphill each way on the command line?)

You pick the one that has the most common ground with the other OSes.

Again, you're not wrong, but I think you're underestimating just how much hand-holding and very specific instructions a lot of kids need in these classes.

You have to teach them both the general concepts ("data lives in things called files, each file lives in a folder, folders are arranged in a hierarchical tree-like structure") - but you also have to teach them to actually use these things, and you have to wait for each student to have done The Task that is being asked of them. Because if you just talk in vague abstractions, it's not going to sink in as much as Doing The Task will.

If you have any sort of opportunity to observe a elementary or middle school computer class, I strongly urge you to. It's very enlightening.

(Actually, observing any kind of class is very interesting. I used to do it at least once a year for work. I know that every profession is probably super interesting to an outside observer, but - especially as a parent - that was wildly interesting and worthwhile.)

Imagine doing this with non-ChromeOS desktop Linux and every kid has a different DE, distro, maybe even window system installed lol

And they all have Firefox and LibreOffice Calc installed, so you can teach them how to use a web browser and a spreadsheet in an OS-agnostic (and DE/distro/WM-agnostic) way.

I don't think the schools are worried so much about not knowing how to teach students to use a word processor, but rather their IT staff not being able to maintain the equipment and set things up properly.

Kids will learn how to use basically any software easily, they are sponges. The poor admin that has to deal with all the lost machine and device enrollment, and password resets and OS upgrades borking stuff, they are the ones who schools are optimizing for.

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