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Message: 2 Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 07:17:58 +0530 From: Atul Asthana @ Home atulasthana@gmx.net Subject: CBSE and AICTE promoting Micro$oft
A lesson in how to sell your product and make it the defacto standard.
When countries like Pakistan have officially decided to use Linux and open source softwares for all governmental organisations, we in India are officially promoting M$.
Take the case of basic education.
The CBSE syllabus officially wants the students to learn and use M$ products. for facts goto www.cbse.nic.in and check for syllabus of computer science, information practices.
Similar is the case with AICTE.
Hats off to our country, we really know how to splurge money for the wrong reason.
I am looking for people who will help in pressurising CBSE and AICTE to change the syllabus to generic applications viz Learn a spreadsheet NOT SPECIFICALLY M$ EXCEL and so on. Any volunteers may please contact me off the list at atul@cheerful.com
The open source tools are so similar, that a student (and at that age, the learning time is very short) will not feel any difficulty.
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On Thu, 2003-08-14 at 19:24, Frederick Noronha (FN) wrote:
Take the case of basic education. The CBSE syllabus officially wants the students to learn and use M$ products. for facts goto www.cbse.nic.in and check for syllabus of computer science, information practices. Similar is the case with AICTE. Hats off to our country, we really know how to splurge money for the wrong reason.
The trick of the trade doesn't stop here. The global promoters of proprietary technologies have already permeated deep into the educational systems. From a just concluded national seminar on ICT-Quality Mantra for Education, at St Thomas Training College, Kottayam on 01-02 Aug 03, we had the privilege of listening to the regional co-ordinator of IT education programme, on details of the methodology to be adopted for training the 4.5 million teachers of HS and +2 of our country.
That was really great intervention. I just asked him one question. On whether he knew actually how much money would fly out from our country, if one teacher is able to help in selling one PC.
I think while this programme goes on, perhaps it would be more wise, if someone would take training sessions on how to cope up with life of slavery or how to survive in the event of a civil war.
CK Raju Thrissur
Frederick Noronha (FN) said on Thu, Aug 14, 2003 at 07:24:47PM +0530,:
I am looking for people who will help in pressurising CBSE and AICTE to change the syllabus to generic applications viz Learn a spreadsheet NOT SPECIFICALLY M$ EXCEL and so on. Any volunteers may please contact me off the list at atul@cheerful.com
The Kochi Free Software User's group had submitted a memorandum against similar moves by the Kerala Govt. The memo was partly successful. Partly, coz. the syllabus itself is not changed. But the text books have been re-written - I said - REWRITTEN, to include references to GNU/LINUX. GNU/LINUX, and nothing else. No references to applications like GIMP, or the concepts of free software.
They are now including OpenOffice.org in the Xth std textbooks. I find that the text book committee is more interested in creating something like one of those 'for dummies' series books for proprietary software.
Given the phenomenal resistance from the establishment to swatantra software, this much a great success.
Mr. Atul, You can refer to the memorandum sent to the government by the Free Software Users' group, available from http://www.symonds.net/~fsug-kochi.
Frederick Noronha (FN) said on Thu, Aug 14, 2003 at 07:24:47PM +0530,:
URI of the Kochi FSUG is -
http://puggy.symonds.net/~fsug-kochi
Even if you try the uri I posted earlier, you will be automatically redirected to the above uri.
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CK Raju -
Frederick Noronha (FN) -
Mahesh T. Pai