Another Trick in the Hall

We don't need that kind of "education"
And we don't need your mind control
No shameless hardsell in our classrooms
Redmond, leave our schools alone
Hey! Redmond! Leave our schools alone!
All in all you're just another Trick in the Hall
All in all you're just another Trick in the Hall

With due apologies to Pink Floyd for this
adaptation of their "Another Brick in the Wall"

Some background:

I performed this song at Linux Bangalore/2002 at the end of the event. This caused a bit of controversy, given my usual attitude of "Pro-Linux does not mean Anti-anything", so a few words of explanation should be in order:

While this appears to be (and is) a rant against Microsoft, it isn't for reasons of my being a Linux and OpenSource supporter. When this "mutation" was originally written, it had "Vendors" in place of "Redmond".

Over the past few years, I have watched vendors (with MS leading the pack) pushing their products into schools and colleges, and actually getting the institutions' curriculum changed to include the compulsory "study" of these products, calling it "education".

I would be against this even if I wasn't a Linux/OpenSource guy - I believe people should be taught technologies and how to apply them generically, instead of making the *product* the technology or the be-all/end-all of education.

These kinds of tactics (teaching products) are shameless hardsell, aimed at conditioning students early on to perceive computing as being the use of that vendor's products.

Can you imagine what it would be like if suddenly the definition of Geography or History was changed to mean the study of the Encyclopedia Britannica?

(By popular demand, here is the MP3)