Shocking?! I must tell you that if I haven't before, I am a full-time student in Georgia. I didn't say UGA...just an undergrad at a university that happens to be in Georgia. So, what you are about to read is an angry posting that may not make sense to most people...
NO ONE FUCKING LEARNS A DAMN USEFUL THING IN SCHOOL.
There...I feel much better now that I have screamed this to the top of my ability. How much technology is in this world of ours? How much? LOTS. Iphones, Ipod touch, graphic calculators, laptops, cell phones, computers, you name it...hell we even got a car that can take voice commands!
How do people that are graduating from college right now not understand how to wire up a sound system? Install an operating system? Navigate a help menu? diagnose anything?!
When you are paying top dollar to hang a pretty pretty diploma on the wall, you really don't get much else.
I told a person that I could load a file on my thumb-drive and give it to them...thank god I didn't say "Sneaker-net" because that would have been crippling for them. I am not that old, I am peers with many of the people I am in school with. I am old enough to have used a 286 in my lifetime and signed onto Prodigy...yet what the hell are they teaching students these days.
If I hear someone say "I have 200 Gigabytes of Ram" or "I burned this file to my memory disk" again I might have to kill them. It is cromagnum to be this paralyzed by technology. I akin this to not being able to change a tire or change the oil in your car for that matter. We are surrounded by all things techy yet people are instantly reverted to single cell organisms when faced with something technological.
When will our schooling wake up and realize they are failing to produce people capable of functioning in todays world. We have video billboards for gods sake and yet 5% of the population even knows what that means.
When I think about the question: "what is missing from today's education that was there 10 years ago?"
VOCATIONAL TRAINING!!!
Where did this go? why did it all of the sudden disappear from our schools? It must have been cost reduction to produce neandertal texting monkeys that can't function without their sms texts for more than 30 seconds. I am just amazed when I talk to people that don't understand a car engine, electricity, welding, transmissions, differentials, central processing units, hard drives, networks, wireless fidelity, digital video interfaces, human interface devices...the list is too long.
Where did shop goe? was it liability because kids are too stupid today to understand that saws kill? or that safety goggles aren't just to make you look stupid, they are to protect your fricken eyes. Without this vital piece of highschool education kids are being spit out into the world without a damn idea how or why anything works. Why is this a problem...some of them go to engineer school to design more things they don't fricken understand. I've been on those campuses and seen them. I worked on my land cruiser in the parking lots of those schools to be surrounded by the curious. I would ask them (pointing at something under the hood) what this is...they wouldn't know. These are mechanical engineers mind you...if they don't get it why should I hope that our AMERICAN CAR COMPANIES will ever get it.
This is a dominoe effect, or the butterfly effect in real time here people. You take out this important piece, this integral point of a school curriculum you cripple learning as a whole. Books can only teach so much theory without application. Children need to learn how to function in this world and it is going to become more and more evident as technology gets more and more sophisticated.
Students need to learn computer repair, electronics repair, car repair, carpentry, metal fabrication, home economics, agriculture, botany, meteorology, networking, construction, and communication skills at an early age.
There is too much at stake to remove the fundamentals from school. Maybe we teach them too much stuff that has no application. I really appreciated that I learned about 18'th century art...but what I would have really like to know is how all this shit works so that I could become the next engineer to make it better than it is.
It goes like this, survival of the fittest doesn't just end with mother nature...it exists everywhere. Are our children ready for it? Hell, in Georgia we have school boards losing acredititation...WTF is that!
Welcome to the future kiddies...enjoy the ride...
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1 comment:
I have no idea what sneaker net is either! And while a lot of what you said is very true, you have to admit, you're not like the average person our age. You know a lot, you learn a lot, you want to know more. I always tell people my husband knows something about just about everything. A lot of people our age and even older can't say that. You're one in a million.
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