Kerala logs out MS!
Financial Times reported this article saying that Kerala has chalked out a plan for migrating its high school students to free software platforms in three years. Report says this applies to all government schools. Another statement that is of concern is 'In the current year, class VIII students have shifted to Linux. By 2007, class XI students and by 2008 class X students will follow suit.'
This sounds bit outrageous because students will be forcibly influenced with this kind of political and somebodies' [ u know who ] propaganda. Student phase of life like soft mud. Teachers are given that wonderful right to mould them and give them a nice shape. Its good that students will be taught a new OS, new kind of applications, what is open source, how can one contribute to open source projects etc. But why deprive the knowledge of Microsoft products which are most widely used across world. By the time these children come out to job market, they would be deprived from the opportunities from the major chunk of job market, the work on Microsoft technologies. By these kind of rules, politicians and some individuals are playing with the student's future.
During student phase, students should have a choice, not a forced propaganda of some political group or some individual. By this kind of rules, student's creativity and learning capabilities will be limited. Let there be a level playing ground where both Microsoft technologies and Open source technologies be taught. In that way, students will make a better choice of what they want.
More of this here, here, here and here.
Read the complete post at http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/sprout/archive/2006/09/13/147073.aspx