The Department of Basic Educati0n yesterday issued a circular (you can read the circular here) that prohibits the use of open source software in schools that offer the subjects “Computer Applications Technology” (CAT) and “Information Technology” (IT). The move has massive implications for the quality of education in those subjects in South Africa, and essentially stifles the development of technology professionals in this country.
On the subject of CAT, the circular says:
from January 2014, and November 2014, the DBE will only use Microsoft Office to respectively implement the CAT curriculum and assess CAT as part of the NSC examinations. Furthermore, only the latest two version of MS Office will be use, i.e. MS OFfice 2010 and MS Office 2013. Should newer version of MS Office be released, the phasing out of olderversions and implementation of newer versions will be communicated to all stakeholders.
On the subject of IT, the circular says:
The programming language to implement the IT curriculum will be standardised using Delphi. Due to training requirements for provinces currently using Java, implementation will be as follows: Grade 11 implementation in January 2015, and grade 12 implementation in January 2016.
As from November 2016, the DBE will only use Delphi for assessment in the IT NSC examinations.
Why is this a problem?
For a start, Delphi is a language that is not in general use today. It has been compared to mandating Latin as the language of instruction in an English class. The move denies students the opportunity to learn languages that are actually in use.
Derek Keats, a local Free and Open Educational Resource advocate ripped the move a new one in his blog post on the subject:
- The decision to allow only a single office suite from a single license rental company (Microsoft) is anti-competitive, and denies school learners exposure to a variety of viable alternative office suites that could indeed run even on said operating system, and also denies other companies access to the school environment.
- The directive locks school children to a particular company’s product, hiding from them that there are viable alternatives that they can have full control over, and that does not lock them into being customers of a particular license rental company (indeed that do not extract rents from artificial scarcity at all and that respects their freedom).
- The decision passes a cost burden onto parents, as in purchasing a laptop for their children will now be required to pay for license fees to Microsoft products, even though viable free alternatives are available.
- The South African government has a Free and Open Source Software Policy, that was promulgated in 2007, and this directive is counter to that policy completely in that it FORCES the implementation of proprietary technologies where viable FOSS alternatives exists in contradiction to government’s own policy.
- IT should be the subject that excites the next generation of software engineers. Goodness knows, we are not producing enough of those by a long shot in South Africa at present. Teaching a moribund language is not going to excite anyone. It would be far better to teach something that is acutally in use, and to allow young people to build real world appliations for mobile phones, tablets, web applications, games. This is how you excite the next generation. Python, PHP, Java, Javascript… any 21st Century language would be better than Delphi. Any. Any at all.
Thoughts, tech fiends?
[Source : dkeats]
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