On Mon, Jan 30, 2006 at 02:31:26PM -0800, Jim Lux wrote: > No, the article was more along the lines that schools spend precious class > hours doing what is essentially user training for a single application, > rather than generic skills. The thrust was (this IS Phi Beta Kappa, after > all) that society would be better served by spending tax dollars to give > students a good liberal arts education, and let the employers pay for > training people to use a particular software package. I'll try and find
There is truth to that, but it is a dangerously biased oversimplifiction, and I know where that bias comes from - because I used to share it. It is simply the college-educated elite's implicit, naive assumption that, "I am personally representative of the population as a whole, everybody is BASICALLY just like me, only the particulars are a bit different." The basic meme that, "Public high schools should provide a top notch liberal arts education, not train for specific skills" is probably true - but only for at most 50% or so of the population. Every town is not Lake Wobegone, all the children are not above average. There needs to be a balance available between "education" and "training", because all one or all the other is guaranteed to be unsuitable for a large number of students. (And this is readily understandable by most local school boards.) In the USA, the college bound are about 25% of their age cohort. (Which is a MUCH larger percentage than it was 75+ years ago.) They form a close approximation to the top 25% of that population when sorted by IQ. These are the folks that unquestionably need mostly education - learning principles, learning how to learn - and only a modest amount of training in specific skills. The folks in the bottom 25% of that distribution need a substantially different mix of education vs. skill training if they are also to prosper and reach their full potential. Any school system which forces ALL students into a one size fits all curriculum, whether it's straight college-prep liberal arts or anything else, is merely guaranteeing BIG problems for a LARGE percentage of its students. Also, there are plenty of life activities for which EVERYONE benefits from plain old rote training. Phonetic reading, multiplication tables, various athletic skills, driving a car, certain safety procedures in the metal shop, and brushing your teeth every day all come to mind. E.g.: There exist intelligent people who don't read very well because back in grade school, they were clever enough to learn most of the words by eye as if they were Chinese pictograms, and no one ever properly trained them to sound out the syllables. They've been faking it ever since, and the tragedy is that most don't even know it. I myself was a poor speller until (years later) I stumbled across a workable spelling technique on my own, simply because no one ever taught me how to spell. (There are TECHNIQUES to spelling, yet no one taught them to me.) I've met very smart people who are scarily inconsistent when driving a car, because they over analyze the problem rather than simply responding by properly trained reflex: "Oh, I didn't turn on my turn signal that time because I looked in the rear-view mirror and I didn't see anyone else behind me." - wrong wrong wrong. A properly trained driver ALWAYS uses his turn signal without thinking about it, because that's the correct default behavior, and there is absolutely no advantage or sense in doing it any other way. "I LIKE my side view mirror adjusted this way, I don't CARE that it doesn't cover my blind spot, I don't CARE that I'm doing it differently than the way every driving instructor in the country teaches, I'm smarter than they are anyway." Etc. -- Andrew Piskorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.piskorski.com/ _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
