In loving, living memory, John Melançon 1928 – 2007
In short, education reform is a good cause. Experimentation is good -- and some of the best charter schools today have experimented in what could be valuable ways. But the push, coming from Wall Street and the extremely wealthy, for this specific form of charter schools, for this specific way of funding them [a thirty-nine percent New Markets tax credit from the federal government], is part of both short-term and long-term drives for profit that will accrue to the wealthiest while weakening the middle class.
My favorite of what I could find: Klavaro
http://klavaro.sourceforge.net/en/index.html
I disagree with their decision to not show the keyboard on the screen, because from my experience (never learning touch-typing until I switched to Dvorak) it is vital to not look at the actual keyboard to know where the characters are, but on the small netbook-style laptops at Shishur Sevay it is better to print the keyboard layout and mount it next to the monitor.
Review of three available on Ubuntu that ended up favoring Klavaro: http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/146602
Dad told me he had a great respect for educated people, not having an education himself.
It took me a long time to realize, to understand, that those with a college education are not smarter than me, usually did not know more than me.
He still said it as if he hoped I would tell him that he was right in the first place, that there was a there there.
He usually followed this by talking about how lucky he was to have had so many intelligent people in his life to educate him, frequently women.