When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. - Hunter S. Thompson

07 August 2006

Keeping up with the profound changes in basic arithmetic

Responsible education reformers know that throwing money at the problems of poor schools and underperforming students doesn't work.

Sun Microsystems' retired CEO Scott McNealy has a new idea: leverage the power of open-source tools and software to make high-quality instructional material available to the world's students for free.

"Math hasn't changed since Isaac Newton," declares Scott McNealy. So why, he asks, is California paying some $400 million annually to "update" grade-school textbooks?

That's just one of the practices questioned by the Sun Microsystems chairman. And one of the problems he believes can be solved.

McNealy, who handed Sun's chief executive reins to Jonathan Schwartz earlier this year, is now applying his know-how to steer the Global Education and Learning Community (GELC). That's a non-profit entity, spun off from Sun in January, which aims to make open-source software available to the world's kids for free--just as Sun sought to distribute its Solaris operating system (OS) and other wares to businesses, for profit.

Sun's McNealy Leads Non-Profit Open-Source Drive - Forbes.com

Related: Global Education and Learning Community (GELC)

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