Guy English: “But, let’s not kid ourselves, literacy is the new literacy. The ability to read, comprehend, digest and come to rational conclusions — that’s what we need more of. We don’t, as a society, need more people who have the mechanical knowledge to turn RSS feeds into Twitter spam. We don’t need anything more posted to Facebook, we don’t need anything we photograph to appear on Instagram and Flickr. If “scripting†is the new literacy then we’ve failed. We’ve become Mario drowning on a Water Level.”
Guy nails it. As software guys we tend to think it’s all about code and the computer.
We need folks to learn the basics so they can navigate life. We need teachers that can actually teach. We need to stop the madness that is standardized testing. Let schools teach kids, not just prepare them for a test.
Let’s return to apprenticeships. Not every kid wants to be a scientist. Not every kid is going to make it through college. We need people to do what they love and be great at it.
One reply on “Learn the Basics”
The funny thing is, standardized testing isn’t the biggest problem. A lot of school – right through high school – is inane process following. Kids need a specific size notebook (often a specific color) for each class. They have to file massive amounts of paper specifying that they’ve done this or that task. At least half of school is now stupid process; I suspect that many of us who graduated in the late 70’s and early 80’s couldn’t tolerate the modern system. What we need is fewer anal types teaching and designing teaching rules. The tests are the very, very least of our problems….