On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Arun Marun@gnu.org.in wrote:
It is not that text book/curriculum doesnt talk abt other freedoms. But effective communication is not happening at school level on ideological aspects of free software. There is scope for improvement. It would be good some one can design interesting activities for children which effectively communicate the different freedoms to children. Any way it is not an easy task to ensure that majority of 60,000 teachers effectively use it.
The IT@School project currently equips a student community to *use* Free Software under its IT-enabled curriculum. This amounts to exploiting Freedom Level 0 only. Limiting an education curriculum to this level is highly inadequate to prevent its retrograde movement back to proprietary software at a later stage.
However, incorporating exercises in the curriculum that must need the other existing levels of Freedoms for its implementation, calls for a different kind of orientation that must be imparted to teachers of varying disciplines. An education curriculum developed this way can never change its direction at a later stage. It should only be after such a loophole-plugged curriculum, that one can convincingly say that a student community is being *equipped* with the ideals of Free Software.
Regarding the modalities on the implementation of a system that exploits all the existing levels of Freedoms may not be as arduous or tough as is thought out to be. Teachers of our public education system have an astonishingly high acumen in coming out with exercises from their own disciplines. Perhaps, all that they need, may be an invitation !!!
CK Raju