[Edu-sig] Python as Application

[Chuck Allison]

Hello Arthur,

Sunday, October 30, 2005, 12:04:01 PM, you wrote:

A> Our schools are not "worker training" institutions.  Never have been -
A> overtly.  They are educational institutions.  Knowledge transfer of the kind
A> that is appropriate to high school is by its nature more generic and general
A> than then anything the .Net platform is about.

<snip>

A> But I am a schoolmarm, when it comes to schools.  The entire point of my
A> relentless efforts to reach you is that what is appropriate in Industry and
A> the Market Place is not what is appropriate in the context of education and
A> schooling.  
A> And making great headway in my efforts to be convincing, I sense ;)

I feel a need to weigh in here, even before reading any further responses in
this thread.

I agree very strongly with Arthur's statements. I think it's okay for
a company to give donations to education, provided no strings are
attached, but I would be happier if there were no need for such grants
in the first place. Education, especially prior to the junior year of
college, is about developing generalists. We need more wide-world-view
thinkers everywhere.

I didn't realize how strongly I felt about this until I visited a
Microsoft/IBM sponsored "university" in Salt Lake a year ago February.
They give students a B.S. in CS after 2.5 years of close to full-time
work (and charge an arm and a leg to do it). They prepare people
tailor-trained for Microsoft and IBM. I left thinking how much they
miss of a well-balanced, liberal arts flavor education that is
appropriate for a baccalaureate, even a traditional one in CS. They
skimp so much on non-technical subjects that it's criminal, in my
opinion. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool software developer (20+ years of
industrial experience), but I would never trade my broad undergraduate
experience for anything (I took so many extra non-technical courses
that it took me 5 years - I had 160 semester hours on my transcript).

It's so important that we don't throw growing minds in to a technical
tunnel.

Of course, from were I sit, few want to go into technical pursuits
anyway :-(.

-- 
Best regards,
 Chuck