[ale] teaching opportunity

[rhia]

On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 11:57, George Carless wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 08:30:14AM -0400, Armsby John-G16665 wrote:
> > I believe we have effectively run off the teacher lady...... I say we give the job
> > to the senior in high school.
> 
> Unfortunately, while I understand the rationale behind the responses that she was 
> given, I think that this list came across as rather arrogant and overbearing.  
> Result: another person put off running Linux, and upset by the Linux community.  
> There might well be good reasons for running the course on a Windows platform - say, 
> because the training centre wasn't currently geared up for running Linux, or because 
> some element of what they have in place for training currently requires Linux 
> software.  Either way, it can be useful to move people towards free software - PHP, 
> MySQL, etc. - on a gradual basis, and it's not necessarily essential or even 
> advisable to introduce people to these things on a platform that is alien to them.  
> And I would suggest that the individual was likely looking for an instructor to set 
> at least part of the curriculum, so while the description of the course may have been 
> ambitious and perhaps inaccurate, this was hardly a reason for an all-out offensive.
> 
> In short, I think that some of you have simply succeeded in coming across as rather 
> immature elitists who would prefer an argument to a constructive effort to actually 
> move people over to using free software.  Ms. Bell repeatedly indicated that further 
> discussion could take place off-list with any interested parties, and I honestly 
> cannot blame her if she didn't want to get embroiled in a flamewar on some frankly 
> rather pedantic points.
> 
> --George


I rarely speak here, so I'll thwap two birds with one email.  

I, too, would like to add my applause to the above reply. Thank you,
George.

Now, about all the political stuff. I'm as interested and motivated as
almost anyone else about the current situation, but THANK YOU, CHRIS for
your attempts to keep it off this list!  There are scores of more
appropriate forums for such discussion. 

-- 
rhia
Excuse me, please. What universe is this?