[geeks] New Tech Schools: Digital Harbor in Baltimore

[velociraptor]

On 4/11/07, Geoffrey S. Mendelson <gsm at mendelson.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 11, 2007 at 02:25:18PM -0400, der Mouse wrote:
> > If they were teaching word processing and spreadsheets, rather than
> > Word and Excel, I'd be a lot less worried.
>
> I don't like it but,  in the U.S., Word is word processing and
> Excel is spreadsheets. They are training people to get jobs as gammas
> (office workers) and betas (administrators). That's the tools they would
> use and what the people that hire them want.
>
> For them, learning OpenOffice INSTEAD of Word and Excel is a "carrer
> limiting move".

This gets back to the problem we've talked about on this list before,
though.  They are teaching a tool that may well be obsolete by the
time these kids in the workforce.  I mean, chose your career at 17
when statistically, you are going to average one career every 7 years?

Teach the kids how to teach themselves a new program, then have them
go out, find something they want to use, and develop a
document/project proving they know how to do it.  But this is *hard*,
and not easily measurable, so it'll never happen.

Schools are so hamstrung by "standards" that the children are getting
no real education, just being spoon-fed the answers to tests.  It's
pathetic and makes me fear for the future.  One of my good college
friends (a history & classics geek, on top of an IT geek) has been
teaching his son, who's 8, iirc, Greek and Latin.  His son is gobbling
up pretty much every piece of info put in front of him by his dad.  He
loves it, so he doesn't even think it's hard.

Like I said, my kids aren't going to public school.  NCLB just put the
headstone at that grave.

=Nadine=