Social influence in student attitude. Twelve years of computer network teaching in Argentina

In the years from 1974 to 1995, when students from 1987 till 1998 made their school experiences, a lot of things happened in Argentina. A bloody military dictatorship, people (friends and relatives) who "disappeared" assassinated by the military, almost a war with a neighbor country (Chile), a UK-Argentina war in the far South Atlantic islands where their classmates were sent as conscripts soldiers. The rebirth of a sort of democracy, very high inflation rates where no planning was possible, and finally a "new deal" with stability but unemployment. In the computer network market side, IBM-PC and Microsoft signed the consumer\´s view of computing. Linux, Internet and computing in the large were not perceived by the society who saw the falling prices, the PC and (pirate) software copying as the rule. All these issues molded students\´ emotional temper and their attitudes toward learning (and toward teaching), and accordingly, the establishment had to change its involvement with students in the teaching-learning process. During this time, this transition was done in a reactive and intuitive way until it was learned how to anticipate (to the extent as social behavior can be done) and how to devise strategies in order to optimize the teaching-learning process.