FOSS
now in one Indian State's school curriculum, and Salesians get behind it
NEW DELHI:
9th January 2008 -- Free
and Open Source Software (FOSS) has been officially included in the
curriculum for the Diploma in Printing Technology, to be approved by
the Government's Directorate of Technical Education in Tamil Nadu,
South India. The new syllabus is to be implemented in all Polytechnic
Colleges in Tamil Nadu from June 2008.
The
case for including FOSS, along with proprietary software, in the
syllabus
of polytechnic colleges was convincingly argued by Fr. P. T. Joseph
SDB, Vice-Principal of SIGA Polytechnic College, who is a member of the
Government's ten-member Syllabus Committee. "The Government should not
be seen as promoting only certain proprietary software companies," Fr.
Joseph argued. "It should welcome FOSS as an alternative software for
students in its institutions," he said. The new syllabus was finalised
during the meeting of the Syllabus Committee that took place at the
Salesian Institute of Graphic Arts (SIGA) Polytechnic College in
Chennai on 3-4 January.
The
Salesians of Don Bosco have been in the forefront of technical
education in India for many decades now. With over 120 centres spread
across the country, they are reputed to be the number one agency, after
the Government of India itself, taking care of middle and lower
level
technical training in the country. They believe that promoting
Open
Source Software is, as the Rector Major Fr. Pascual Chavez puts it, 'a
way of moving towards democratization of information and culture,' and
a way of overcoming the 'digital divide' between the rich and the poor.
In fact, one of the decisions of BOSCOM, the National Salesian Social
Communications body, this year was to promote the
use of FOSS in all Salesian provinces of India.
The movement towards Free and Open Source Software
can be backed by a principled approach to a range of issues central to
Salesian education, not least the Strenna 2008 appeal to revisit the
Preventive System and to promote the rights of poor young people.
A meeting of all Salesian Centres of formation to Social Communication
in Sao Paolo last year supported a worldwide Salesian effort to develop
such a principled understanding of FOSS and its implementation on
behalf of the poor. Two Salesian seminars this year, one in
Argentina, the other in Brazill, are following up this concept and in
October the Universidad Politecnica Salesiana in Ecuador is mounting an
international Conference on the theme of Communication Education, FOSS
and the Salesian approach to education.
