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 (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people ) 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)
(Also posted at enrevanche)