Activities/Education/Reasons_for_schools_to_use_Free_Software

Schools should teach children to be good members of the community, and schools should not provide product training for companies that do not respect freedom.

==Arguments==
We should try to keep each point as short as possible.  These arguments should be a resource for people who want to approach a school, teacher, or related body to ask them to use Free Software.

===Sharing===
Schools should teach children to help each other and to share with each other.  With proprietary software, teachers are required to prevent such sharing and to tell the children that sharing of useful software is wrong.  Using free software allows schools to set a better example and teach children to share.

===Learning to program===
Some children will be interested in how software works, and some will be interested in writing software.  When a school uses Free Software, they are in a position to help interested children learn about computers to any depth.

===Dependency===
If children learn to do things a certain way in school, the easiest way for them to do that thing in their adult life is to continue to do it the same way.  If schools teach children to rely on proprietary software, they are giving the child a dependency on something which they have to pay for and which generally discourages sharing and good will in society.  However, if a school teaches children to rely on Free Software, the software can never be taken away from the child (even in the child's adult life) and the child can continue using this software while helping others by sharing it.

==Implementation==
Schools should use only Free Software, but this policy can be phased in.  One first step would be to tell the school about Free Software and then suggest they replace any proprietary web browsers with Mozilla Firefox.  Or, you could ask that they install OpenOffice.org and that they remove any proprietary offices suites (if present).

Component by component, they can move to Free Software, and when they replace the operating system with a Free Software operating system, the change should be quite easy.

==Related pages==
* [[Free software usage in schools]]
* [[Reasons for public administration to use Free Software]]

==Sources for further information==
* http://fsfeurope.org/projects/education/argumentation.en.html
* [http://fsfeurope.org/documents/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html#free-software-and-schools Richard Stallman talking about this during another talk]
* [http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/transcript_richard_stallman_honorary_degree_speech_pavia_2007 Stallman's acceptance speech for an honorary degree in Pavia]
* [http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/transcript_of_rms_at_wsis_on_is_free_open_source_software_the_answer#wsis--schools-and-proprietary-software  Stallman talks about the WSIS development agenda]

[[Category:Reasons for|Schools to use Free Software, reasons for]]