Date : Sun, 02 Apr 2006 18:24:28 +0100 (BST)
From : Greg Cook <debounce@...>
Subject: Re: Basic & BBC Basic (OT)
On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 12:40:11 +0100, Fragula <fragula@...>
wrote:
> A.J. Davis wrote:
>
>
> >> the IT curriculum consists primarily of Microsoft Word, Access and
> Excel
> >> and very little else of technical merit. They've even phased out
> Logo
> >> (and the chance to use my Valiant Turtle) in favour of photo
> >> manipulation (although to be fair we do teach with Dreamweaver).
> Now I
> >> realise that you can't really teach 6502 any more, but I think
> kids
> >> should be shown more than Microsoft apps.
>
>
> Indeed. Its nothing short of a crime. Children are being subjected to
> the Dumbing Down experience of Windows apps, "taught" the load of
> psychological obfuscation that Microsoft Corp. pass off as though it
> were actually a computer.
>
> I ask, Nay, I DEMAND that schools be more honest, and stop calling it
> an
> "IT lesson", and use more correct terminology, like "Microsoft
> Indoctrination Propaganda and Future Consumer Lock In Session".
>
> No really, our kids are a captive audience to this bullshit!
Oh dear. Where to start?
If you believe everything the Daily Mail tells you, you'll know that if
the schoolkids of today want something unconventional, such as Linux or
OO.o, they'll find out where and how to get it. If it upsets you that
the current generation isn't taking up Linux, it's a reflection of a
general trend away from hobbies towards socialising. At least we can
applaud their resistance to consuming *every* operating system.
I've come to terms with computers meaning different things to us and
our children. I'll even admit I don't know a thing about x86
assembler!
The lack of widespread programming activity is because it's all been
done (Donald Knuth has pretty much seen to that.) New algorithms are
found mainly by people paid to research them, and so they generally get
patented. Patented or not, they are then coded by just enough
programmers to fulfil the urgent need (one team in each software house,
plus one for each of the open source licences.) No surprise that I
haven't been able to find a software development job in over two years.
Now that computers have escaped the dinosaur pen and out-multiplied
original uses for them, people tend to use them for a limited number of
applications (some of which don't require Turing completeness.) This
is nothing to be ashamed of, perhaps something to be thankful for.
> Does that sound too extreme?
Yes, and I regret having previously associated with you.
> Well, whats taught to most kids has
> little
> to do with technology, more to do with the proprietary obfuscation
> layer
> that *hides* the technology.
Guess what? The market has spoken - it's put off by the sight of
technology. I order you in the name of consistency to shut down your
GUI (desktop metaphor) then quit your CLI (teleprinter correspondent
metaphor) and start toggling those genuine honest switches!
> That isn't teaching, its the dirtiest
^^^^^^^^
> form
^^^^
> of advertising.
^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^
Advertising isn't dirty. Do you really want schoolchildren to have
hang-ups about business the same way Americans do about sex and nudity?
That I've never been made comfortable with the idea that I should ask
a price for my time and works is probably a factor why I've not had any
job in over two years.
> (Along with school Assembly, but that's too off
> topic.)
You'd replace it with school Machine Code. (The pupils shift in and
out, line up in registers and take the address...)
> I wonder how much [->8-] had to brown-bag successive
> people-in-positions to get away with this. Anyone know?
Never attribute to malice... (at least, never name names. OMG.)
> No. I really and genuinely think the Model B, and BASIC is what
> should
> be in our primary schools, followed by BBC B with the lid off and
> simple
> logic probes out,
You may be right there, though. Megahertz will be slow enough for a
school 'scope, it will demonstrate the bus cycle and help show the
transistors underneath all the user-friendliness. (aside: I got
started on computers from a (mechanical) disc-playing toy organ with a
keyboard, which broke when I was one-and-a-half and I've been looking
for substitutes ever since.)
> and assembler, then later Linux (sixth form
> onward),
> is what we should be teaching for I.T.
>
> A "de branded" but open-standards (Open Office?) Word Processing,
> Spreadsheet, Database etc. could be *used* in other parts of the
> curriculum more appropriate. This should be written in law.
And when this Linux revolution sweeps through our schools, it will be
perfectly okay to airbrush out the penguin, the Linux name etc., so the
kids have to find their copy of the software that's supposedly so much
better for them, on their own initiative (and possibly fall for some
evil corp. clone "Lixux")? You'll notice Open Source is a trademark,
and for good reason.
> If Microsoft then wanted a part of the home education market, they
> could
> bloody well make their products compatible!
>
> My suspicion is that "I.T.", and the old Computer Literacy Project"
> is
> something that was potentially liberating to the masses.
> Multinationals
> and governments on the other hand would wish to use technology as a
> means of control and subjeaction of the same masses, and would not
> wish
> those masses to actually know how the stuff works, but merely to buy
> it,
> read their SPAM and porn, and be greatful to The Corporations that
> rule
> here (and in most of the "Free World" for allowing them to be able to
> take out the finance to pay for a new machine every 18 months.
On this subject, all my life has been but one lesson repeated: in this
the best of all possible worlds, there is no room for improvement. Or
in so many words, This is the real world; like it or lump it.
I get the impression that you find the commercial way, and money in
general, "dirty." Well it keeps us all alive, thank you very much, and
I wouldn't want us to come all this way just to give it all up and live
in hide tents and be taken by surprise by the next Gatling guns, built
on the other side of the planet by the countries that had more sense.
> So for the last 10-15 years or so, it seems to me that the whole
> computer literacy thing is being desperately back-pedalled on, and
> replaced with a sort of consumerist "education" that is more suitable
> for sheep destined for the corporate slaughterhouse.
Slaughterhouse? I'm sorry. That isn't even accurate.
The worst sheep are the ones who believe anything the conspiracy
theorists tell them.
> there.. and i never mentioned Research Machines once, or asked how
> they
> hell they managed to say in business.
>
> Straw Poll? Flame War? Anyone?
>
> Cheers!
>
> M.
And to think I could take you seriously.
Greg Cook
debounce@...
http://homepages.tesco.net/~rainstorm/
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