Mahesh T. Pai wrote:

[true state of affairs]

Mahesh, after reading your response, I was reminded of the words of two great saints:

"I have not conceived my mission to be that of a knight-errant wandering everywhere to deliver people from difficult situations. My humble occupation has been to show people how they can solve their own difficulties." - Mahatma Gandhi

Minds without Fear:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection: Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is lead forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action-- Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

--Rabindranath Tagore

Mahatma Gandhi also said, "If, after the coming of Swaraj the people of India will keep on looking to the government for regulating every detail of their lives, then that Swaraj will be meaningless."

The Free Software Movement is one of the greatest Voluntary actions in recent history, that has brought in visible changes, and we can really hope that this sharing will lead us into the space of freedom Tagore could only dreamed of.

There are many hurdles, but they could be overcome. One problem is that we have too many competing education streams: State Board, Matriculation, CBSE, ICSE, along with others, and these divisions can easily dissipate any attempts to streamline the system of education.

Here, the Director of Matriculation Schools, under the Govt. of TN has proposed the inclusion of Computer Science as a subject for students from III Standard and X Standard, and the proposed syllabus is available at:

http://www.tn.gov.in/matric/default.asp

Traditionally, the Matriculation Schools in TN have good ifrastructure, teaching staff and curriculum. A lot of effort appears to have gone into preparing the matriculation school curriculum, and it is truly commendable that it has been made available online requesting for feedback to raise the standards of education.

Reading the material on CS reminded me of my days back in school. Those of us from CBSE schools can recall the SUPW Classes: Boys had EG - Electrical Gadgets and girls could opt for Sewing - where learning was by doing things. My first EG class started with "Properties of Magnets", and our teacher brought a couple of bar magnets to class and taught us that magnets have two poles - North and South, like poles repel, unlike poles attract, did a demo with the magnets, then passed the magnets around the class letting us try it. Later, electric bulbs, batteries, transformers, resistors and capacitors entered into the class: but all these were referred to only by their generic names and we were taught about their general properties. Brand or vendor names were used only to compare market prices, quality and suitability for use. [BTW, SUPW is short for Socially Useful Productive Work]

Magnets have another property: It is easy to "copy" and "make" a magnet by stroking. Sharing free software is as easy and lossless like sharing or making magnets. Students could be easily encouraged to share code and work together on projects.

I wish that the whole school curriculum is based and built around SUPW. Free Software is the way to go if we desire to have a society where children are taught to be independent, resourceful, productive, co-operative, rational, intelligent and socially responsible.

Computer Science is fairly mature, qualifies as a good vocational subject, and has evolved standards and specifications that are vendor neutral. Lessons taught under Computer Science should be given general titles like word-processing, spreadsheets, database management, operating systems, file management, programming etc. The matriculation syllabus needs corrections, and should use subject headings like "Database Systems" instead of "Microsoft Access", or "Word Processing" instead of "Microsoft Word".

Broadly, Computing could be taught at two levels: Upto 10th standard, it may be appropriate to teach "Computer Applications" - whereby students become proficent _users_ of computer applications: anything from graphical processing tools like gimp to word processing, spreadsheets etc, with an elementary grounding in programming through basic, bash [free software tool: bwbasic] and some scripting languages like javascript and php.

"Computer Science" may be suitable for higher secondary classes, where the focus could be on learning C, system administration and other aspects of the science with depths suitable for their level. Of course, free software philosophy highlighting the virtues of sharing and respect for ethical values could permeate every level.

Some of this was shared at the ILUGC list, and, we could also send feedback as requested by the Director of Matriculation Schools, even though we have crossed the due date, as the proposed syllabus is to be introduced only in stages from 2005, so that the Computer Science subject could be truly and honestly taught as a SCIENCE.

The Free Software Movement has contributed several thousand useful applications. With little effort from more volunteers, we could make the free software wealth reach everyone.

Thanks to the divisions in school systems, we have to repeat the exercise, wherever these bugs exist, until they are fixed :)