Should people have healthcare? Well, healthcare is a privilege reserved to those who can afford it. Are Nazis bad? Some are, for sure, but, you know, there's some good people who happen to be nazis.
Once upon a time, wingnuts claimed to have better ideas for helping the blacks and the poors. Now, they don't even bother pretending anymore: they hate the blacks and the poors.
Now Mama is gone and I actually miss her. I worry about her. She pisses me off sometimes, but it's mostly garden variety grandmother spoiling the grandkid stuff.
That's the latest bullshit going 'round: a kind of belief that if kids can learn code, they all will come up with useful apps that they can sell for a gazillion dollars. It's basically a get rich quick scheme disguised as a form of education!
Wired had an interesting piece earlier this year saying that coding is positioned to be a sort of 21st century working class career. Rather than being something best pursued by wunderkind kids, it turns out it's a pretty good career for non-college-educated people who might, in another generation, have been the skilled workers at an auto plant.
Recent reeducation programs for laid off coal miners for example have found that many of them can learn to be solid coders.
People selling the chance to be the next Mark Zuckerberg are full of shit, there are plenty of jobs wrangling JavaScript for banks and whatnot. Those aren't going to make you rich, but they are solidly middle class and open to ordinary people in a way not seen on this scale since you could have five kids, two cars, and a suburban home on a single salary from Chrysler. And there are going to be more and more of those every year.
Remember that I work for a Texas public school district, so I don't make much money and I have to deal with crazy administrators. Solidly middle class sounds pretty good.
Jeff, of course Wired would say that! I mean, that's the kind of thing a technophile publication like Wired would say.
I learned a lot of Fortran and a bit of C++ when I was an undergrad (not because I wanted to, I had to). Those skills are useless to me now: programming is continually being updated and parts of it keep getting automated, taking it to higher and higher levels of abstraction. So the stuff I learned is now archaic. Therefore, I have the impression that, sure, you can teach kids and coal miners to code, but unless they immediately get a job, or keep practicing it on their own, coding is the kind of skill that becomes outdated almost as soon as one learns it.
In my opinion (I don't claim to know the truth here), it would be better, in the long run, to give kids a solid general education than have them waste their time on stuff like coding. Besides, I think learning to code is job training, not education.
Jeff, to be clear, I'm specifically bitching against the notion of giving kids (teens and children) so-called "marketable" skills. In Quebec, there are people (mostly bosses, their lackeys and assorted technophiles) that are pushing for serious and obligatory programming classes in primary and secondary schools.
And no, general education is not a solution to employment. In my opinion, general education shouldn't have anything to do with employment. General education is only a (often partial) solution to ignorance.
By the way, when I graduated, back in 2000, there were a bunch of people I knew that were finishing university level degrees in programming, just as the dot-com bubble collapsed. They couldn't find jobs, and when the job market for computer nerds finally improved, their skills were already outdated, and people just a few years younger got the jobs. Most of these people weren't hardcore computer nerds: they just wanted to get good jobs, and everybody kept telling them that computers were the way of the future, so they went into programming.
In other words, don't study something for a long time because you want to get a job. That may happen, that may not happen, the market giveth and the market taketh away. Study something for a long time because you love it, and maybe, if you're lucky, you'll end up being paid for it. But probably, you won't. In that case, get job training in coding or whatever is the latest fashionable skill. I hear accounting pays well.
Jeff, I've read the article. I was never specifically talking about giving coding jobs to coal miners. I don't care about that. If it works, fine. I doubt it, but hey... That's job training.
What concerns me is basic education and how it's getting watered down by a strictly utilitarian approach to learning, that is, by the idea that the main use of education is getting a job.
You were talking about something that resembled one of my pet peeves, and I went off on a tangent.
I'm with Kim on this one. Even if he is easily distracted, if he's home 3.5 hours before you, he should be able to have his one-hour's worth of homework done!
OMG! While I do hate that I'm bumping old threads up to the top with new posts, there's stuff I'm seeing that wasn't on FB. Tripp, you have gout? That's horrid. I hope you're getting good treatment!
Comments
Furious at myself for not taking a "before" picture. Now I can't brag about it because nobody know how shitty things looked beforehand.
What is the point?!?!?!
Car on Fire
Study Finds Losers More Likely to Believe in Conspiracy Theories
That's the latest bullshit going 'round: a kind of belief that if kids can learn code, they all will come up with useful apps that they can sell for a gazillion dollars. It's basically a get rich quick scheme disguised as a form of education!
Recent reeducation programs for laid off coal miners for example have found that many of them can learn to be solid coders.
People selling the chance to be the next Mark Zuckerberg are full of shit, there are plenty of jobs wrangling JavaScript for banks and whatnot. Those aren't going to make you rich, but they are solidly middle class and open to ordinary people in a way not seen on this scale since you could have five kids, two cars, and a suburban home on a single salary from Chrysler. And there are going to be more and more of those every year.
I learned a lot of Fortran and a bit of C++ when I was an undergrad (not because I wanted to, I had to). Those skills are useless to me now: programming is continually being updated and parts of it keep getting automated, taking it to higher and higher levels of abstraction. So the stuff I learned is now archaic. Therefore, I have the impression that, sure, you can teach kids and coal miners to code, but unless they immediately get a job, or keep practicing it on their own, coding is the kind of skill that becomes outdated almost as soon as one learns it.
In my opinion (I don't claim to know the truth here), it would be better, in the long run, to give kids a solid general education than have them waste their time on stuff like coding. Besides, I think learning to code is job training, not education.
General education as a solution to employment?
Walk into a bar and grill and ask how many of the waiters and bartenders there got gen ed-heavy liberal arts degrees.
That is exactly what was recommended to Gen X and Millennials that brought on this shitty situation.
And no, general education is not a solution to employment. In my opinion, general education shouldn't have anything to do with employment. General education is only a (often partial) solution to ignorance.
By the way, when I graduated, back in 2000, there were a bunch of people I knew that were finishing university level degrees in programming, just as the dot-com bubble collapsed. They couldn't find jobs, and when the job market for computer nerds finally improved, their skills were already outdated, and people just a few years younger got the jobs. Most of these people weren't hardcore computer nerds: they just wanted to get good jobs, and everybody kept telling them that computers were the way of the future, so they went into programming.
In other words, don't study something for a long time because you want to get a job. That may happen, that may not happen, the market giveth and the market taketh away. Study something for a long time because you love it, and maybe, if you're lucky, you'll end up being paid for it. But probably, you won't. In that case, get job training in coding or whatever is the latest fashionable skill. I hear accounting pays well.
What concerns me is basic education and how it's getting watered down by a strictly utilitarian approach to learning, that is, by the idea that the main use of education is getting a job.
You were talking about something that resembled one of my pet peeves, and I went off on a tangent.