Principles of computer technology should be taught to those students taking such courses. I hung out at a school with a Digital PDP-8 running the almost unknown ETOS system. Others were running punch cards on systems with EBCDIC. Others were learning on Apple IIs and Commodore PETs.
These experiences did not hinder my later becoming a Mac/Windows administrator.
Many of the important programming languages (e.g. Java) are not tied to a single platform.
Operating system administrator is not so broad a job category that it ought to be taught in high school to most students. The Windows instruction students receive today is largely transferrable to the Macbook Airs, iPads and Linux Netbooks the students already have.
No one knows what the landscape will look like in ten years, when these students are though with high school and post-secondary education and hitting the job market.
Any modern OS on an decent computer will do these days. The principles are what’s important.
Driver’s ed teaches only how to (hopefully) safely operate the car;little or nothing is taught of what goes on under the hood.
Most people could care less whether it is Windows,Mac,Linux, or BongBoola(tm) as long as it is affordable,reliable and gets the desired task done well and easily.
And that is probably a very rational attitude to have.
The best classes I had in school focused on theory, rather than application. My "Computer Architecture" class instructor didn't care what language we used to write our labs as he wouldn't even look at the code. All he cared about was results. With those labs, you couldn't really cheat, anyway. Best class I ever took. Cost me 200 hours in the lab that quarter.
I recently came across a box of my old bunch card programs. Nostalgia...
This is the second school District I've worked for as a Net Admin. Predominantly OSX with a few Win labs in the HS and Middle schools. Currently building out a ten seat Linux lab. Looking at SuSE Live for Education, Edbuntu, Mint (just because of the clean user interface), etc...
Was tempted to just set them up as kiosk's for Internet only. Lock 'em down with Iceweasel and use the Lightspeed box to restrict them to only Google Docs. I'll pilot the interface first and see what the teachers think...