How do people who care about #privacy and #FOSS, who have children, come to terms with a public school system that "requires" signing children up for google products in order to teach them?

I'm personally really struggling with this one. I could opt out... but then my child is going to feel excluded, teachers will probably hate us because of the extra effort this would impose on them to do their jobs, their educational experience will probably be "less" somehow, etc.

@craftyguy Not sure if my opinion will matter here since I don't have kids myself (and never will), but I spent a significant amount of time with my niece when she was very young (it wouldn't be a stretch to say I was basically her mom until she was 4 as my sister was too busy with work etc). She's now 13, and she's a great kid (despite being a... problematic age).

I'm absolutely disgusted that local schools require children to not only use full MS package (Windows, Teams, Office 365 etc) but some schools also strap Meta headsets onto children during some classes. Without asking for consent or caring about data that's being collected about children. You either fall in line, or fail classes from what I've heard.

When I was in school, computers were running XP/Vista... or Knoppix, Mandriva, Xubuntu. I had zero issues doing my homework using OpenOffice (ouch, my back) on my system (Ubuntu in elementary school, Debian/Arch in middle school, and Debian/Gentoo in high school).

Our tax money shouldn't be funding corporations, and our kids shouldn't be forced to use spyware. In fact, they should be educated on privacy implications that come with using Google/Microsoft/Meta products (and frankly many others).

@elly @craftyguy If I tried to refuse using google/ms services for school, I'd probably be called "crazy" or maybe even just lazy and wanting to find a reason to not do work. Pretty much all of our assignments are turned in online. I have no choice really. I also don't remember ever signing anything to give consent to this.

@weirdtreething @elly @craftyguy what there needs to be is an opt-out option. Not a form everyone is forced to sign.

@chocolateloverraj @elly @craftyguy The sad part is that the people in charge of the school systems probably don't even understand the issues here.

@craftyguy speaking as someone who was in public school in the 2010's, google docs and slides are indispensable for schoolwork. Every essay from 6th grade thru the end of my bachelor's degree was in google docs. Nearly every presentation was in slides. Being able to share and cooperatively work on a slidedeck with other students is just the way to go. The teachers are very flexible. They let us write essays on our phones or however we liked most of the time. The admin made sure everybody had a google account, but in the classroom, as long as you could turn in a digital file in their grading system of choice, the teachers didn't really care.

There were a couple university instructors who dug their heels in and forced us to use word and powerpoint, and they paid for that decision in countless hours of troubleshooting and answering questions. There were a lot of professors who made us handwrite (not cursive, i mean printing with pencil) our final exams/essays. I understand why that was, but they still paid a price of grading and occasionally losing papers.

Your school's or in my case, school district's IT administrator has the most power over the kids' experiences. The schools ran their own firewalls to protect the students for better or worse. Of course, we all found our ways around that. IDK if it's still the case, but at the time the google platform for organizations and schools, had a set of safety tools to limit and regulate the experiences the kids have, and it worked pretty well. It definitely wasn't as manipulative as normal google services. There were fewer sketchy ads, and we weren't supposed to be able to access any adult or too unchristian things.

The one thing I tell students is to ask when the schools delete their accounts, cuz they cost the school money. Most schools will delete all student accounts 6-12 months after graduation, and if all of your school projects are in google drive, they'll get deleted too.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.

@craftyguy maybe u could talk to the teacher/principal/school IT department?

@craftyguy The way I see it, opting out is protecting your child.

@craftyguy I don't have children, but as a former child and current school student:

My school uses Google services and Chromebooks. I have a school Google account, but I refuse to use it, instead I bring in my own laptop and teachers email me work in OpenDocument Format (to my self-hosted mail server, because school email is webmail-only and doesn't allow SMTP/IMAP/POP3 access), and I email it back to them in plain text/OpenDocument Format/PDF. I used to use the bring-your-own-device WiFi network, but they shut that down, so since then they give me a code to access the guest WiFi every day (there's a captive portal and you need a code which lasts one day).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, they did remote teaching via Google Meet and Google Classroom, which I refused to use. My parents would print out work from Google Classroom (or send it to me as OpenDocument Format), and sometimes teachers would either do 1:1 lessons with me over Jitsi, or there would be someone in both a Jitsi meeting with me and a Google Meet meeting with everyone else acting as a bridge, but I didn't really get much work done for other reasons (it's hard to concentrate on doing schoolwork at home and my sleep schedule got very messed up).

@craftyguy
homeschool

@joshua @craftyguy This exactly. Not only will you avoid whatever suite of spyware but you also avoid having your child exposed to government authority from a very young age.

Most school systems produce sheep, not freethinking humans. Children are people too.

@k8ie @craftyguy
Also, as a general rule, homeschool kids perform better even on standardized tests.

@joshua @k8ie have you home schooled a kid?

@craftyguy @k8ie
I actually teach at a private school. But my private school unfortunately uses google classroom also.
I have assisted parents that homeschool.

@joshua @k8ie yeah homeschooling just seems... very hard for those of us with no experience as educators AND with a full-time job.

@craftyguy @k8ie
It definitely is. It is virtually impossible if one parent cannot stay home.
But if you can figure out a way to make it happen, homeschooling can be the best way to educate a child.
Not all children learn the same way (which is why most schools fail also), so it may not be best for your kids, but I would say for the vast majority of at least pre-high school kids, it is best.

@craftyguy @joshua no, no, I'm not in a situation to raise a kid yet 😅