Much of the news on this website talks about the creative ways that developing countries are using open source technology to build educational initiatives that are impressive when compared to education policies in the United States, which is much richer and could easily afford to replicate these outstanding programs in countries like Brazil.

At the same time, the United States public education system faces one crisis after another. In California, which is already facing embarrassing infrastructure problems, Gov Schwarzenegger has fired 20,000 teachers with another 80-some thousand pink slips to come. Parents are, of course, outraged:

“Already the bathrooms stink, the roof is leaking, and we never have enough textbooks. Now the school is going to take away key teachers and personnel,” says Fidel Garcia, father of two at Manchester Ave. Elementary School in downtown L.A. “This can’t be right.”

But keeping on-topic to this news site, the technology within U.S. public schools is a disgrace. The aging and expensive desktop computers are running out-dated versions of Windows, slowed to a crawl by all the spyware and viruses that have accumulated on them over the years:

“We’re seeing the stand alone desktop PC as a colossal failure in schools.” says Paul Nelson, Technology Director for the Riverdale School District in Portland, Oregon. “After several years of installing PCs in classrooms, it is evident that schools do not have the staffing to support them and keep them running. Often infected with viruses and subjected to student abuse, these systems can quickly turn into a useless but expensive pile of junk in the back of the classroom.”

Nelson recommends a switch to thin-client systems — a model already adopted and being implemented on a wide-scale by much poorer countries like Brazil. An informal study that examines a public school switch to open source software shows not only concrete dollars saved but overwhelming gains in terms of hardware cost savings, security, virus protection — not to mention the educational value of allowing students to reach their full potential by getting under the hood to examine source code, operating systems, how network protocols really work, etc.

And, we haven’t even gotten into the truly cruel relationship between Microsoft and the public school system in the United States. In Philadelphia, acting on an anonymous tip, Microsoft is forcing the school system into a “lengthy and expensive audit of every computer in all 264 schools within the impoverished school system” (when all was said and done, Philadelphia owed Microsoft close to $5 million, all on a licensing technicality). And it isn’t cheap to begin with to go the closed, proprietary route for technology in classrooms: $50 million in Maine just for 7th and 8th graders in a deal with Apple, $45 million in equipment alone with IBM’s education offering, $46 million for Microsoft’s deal with Philadelphia school districts. All in all, public schools spent $9.6 billion on technology in 2006 with rates increasing around 16% each year. Taxpayers need to be asking why $9 billion in public spending ends up giving them worse and worse technology in public schools! Taxpayers need to be asking how developing countries can offer their students a better technology curriculum at much lower costs while US public schools continue to throw money down the drain.

Meanwhile, the community is filling in where the public schools refuse to act to rectify this expensive and socially-devastating trend. A non-profit in the Bay Area is recycling old computers, installing open source software on them, and donating them to needy schools. Individual heroes like Heather Carver in Windsor, California is saving her school district money by adopting the Brazilian open source model. But these individual efforts cannot save the system — what is required are bold, institution-wide initiatives like what’s happening in Brazil and the state of Kerala in India, which is distributing 40,000 open source laptops to their students.

Open source is ready to be used by nation-wide educational institutions. Governments in much poorer countries are leveraging these advantages to outpace the United States in education, creating a generation of students who understand the intricacies of operating systems while US students can barely fight their way past a dozen spyware windows. The only obstacle is political — and condemning a generation of students who entrust us to teach them to the best of our abilities is inexcusable. Concerned parents should educate themselves on these issues and then force public education decision-makers to give our kids the technology education they deserve.