School computers are riddled with spyware & proprietary software, the fact that they use windows is bad enough, but then you are forced to use edge or chrome and other proprietary software and often you are blocked from installing open source alternatives like librewolf or duck duck go may be blocked.
What I am asking is, how can we get around this, do i just need to bring my own laptop using FOSS privacy respecting software. or is there another way around this. Thanks for the help.
Yeah... no, most users do not concern themselves with these things. Most users are focused on the tasks and not the tools, for better or worse.
You could argue that an increasing number of users do, but most is way too far.
Yes, they do. Most users, even young kids, are freaking out when you tell them anybody at Facebook (or Microsoft, or Google, or whatever, or whomever they delegate access to, can be school superintendent, boss, sysadmin, etc) can access their data. They either don't know about it, or knew about it once but decided it wasn't "right" enough to keep in mind and ignored it since.
Most users DO care and are concerned but they are so convinced there are no possible alternatives they convinced themselves no matter how terrible it is, there is just nothing they can do about it.
Please ask around, take a random person, close or not, stranger or not, technical or not, and ask them (explain if you most) if they do have such concerns. I bet they do. If they don't I'll apologize for my naivety.