[Edu-sig] Microsoft's KPL

[Arthur]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: edu-sig-bounces at python.org [mailto:edu-sig-bounces at python.org] On
> Behalf Of Laura Creighton
> To: Kirby Urner
> 
> In a message of Fri, 07 Oct 2005 09:52:09 PDT, "Kirby Urner" writes:
> <snip>
> >In education, being a really small company is what's ultra cool.  Because
> >your students think they might want to be private, independent
> entrepreneurs
> >like you someday.
> 
> This might be a better model for a general education -- instead of
> training people to be factory workers, we might try training them
> to be small business owners and entrepreneurs.  It would certainly
> be an interesting way to build a curriculum.

That *is* the education "we" got - or what many I know were able to make of
it.

Thinking about it - I am the only one in my immediate family, for 3
generations, that has ever drawn a paycheck for an extended period from a
profit making organization.  Either they have run their own small businesses
or worked for non-profits - religious or secular.  And only my grandmothers
*didn't* work - for money. 

I eventually got out of the "affiliated" life.

And devoting some energy to learning Python was indirectly connected to
getting me out.

The other Python connection that comes to mind:

I happen to know that Guido's old boss at CNRI was out of the same free City
College that was my father.  I remember that because I had noticed it on his
bio and used it as a schmooze point when I had written to him as part of the
campaign to do what needed to get done to have JPython freed up when Guido
left there.

A free City College that produced more than its fair share of Laureate level
scientists.  

Though that was certainly not my Dad's crowd - his being more the
jock/mid-brow/prepare me for small business crowd. For which that college
provided an enormously effective curriculum.  

Which is the kind of fact *within* my frame of reference that conspires to
make me more the reactionary than the visionary.

Why is it so important to not look more admiringly at the past, in mapping
the future?  

Beyond  - of course - the fact that suggesting such tends to make one sound
like a dolt.

I have reached the blissful state of non-affiliation.  

And can afford not to care that he sounds like a dolt.

The affiliated world more respects the visionary, who knows we have had it
all wrong for all time.

We need new paradigms, of course.  

We buy into to his program - and in three month he has skipped town.

Art