On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 5:10 PM, David MacQuigg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > At 03:30 PM 12/8/2008 -0800, michel paul wrote: > >>David: >>>>What I would like to see is a discussion of *why* there is not more >>>>teaching of programming in high school. >> >>I think part of the problem in the past has been the misunderstanding about >>tech jobs getting outsourced. I've heard people say there's no point in >>becoming a programmer, because all the jobs are going overseas. It's really >>kind of silly. > > Stated that way, it does seem circular. I've heard it stated more > convincingly by an EE prof to a class of undergrads. "If you go into > engineering, you will be facing layoffs." Imagine the effect of that > expectation on smart students who see their buddies going into law or > medicine, and getting more pay and more respect than engineers. It's no > wonder there are almost no US students in our graduate classes. I've thought > about what I would have said to those students. It would be more like "If > money is your major motivation, find another profession. If technology is in > your blood, stay with it. Learn everything you can. The money will come out > OK."
I read this as: Engineering is something where mediocrity doesn't pay. Doctors and lawyers are like cobblers, their output is limited by the number of hours they can work, so there is room for good solid workers who aren't particularly innovative. Engineering at its best is not like that at all. It's a field whose main *point* is to make manual labor redundant. Good engineers do their work because it's their passion. The rest... Well they can always try to earn a living cranking out Java code. ;-) > We need a shocker like Sputnik. There won't be one. History doesn't repeat itself that literally. Each crisis is fundamentally different, because each time we've learned from the last one. > Maybe this economic crisis will do it. It's not as directly related to > technical education as was Sputnik, and it may be even tougher to spend money > on education now than it was in 1957, but consider the alternative. What > will we have to offer our trading partners. Not manufacturing. Not > intellectual work. Real estate? I disagree that we have no intellectual work to offer. Most outsourced work I have witnessed first-hand is poorly done. Yes, if your primary skill is J2EE, you should be afraid, very afraid. (Or Perl, if the geo data shown by Google trends is any indication. :-) OTOH if you have a passion for inventing great engineering solutions, the USA is still the place to be. I think it's fine that engineering isn't the job creation engine that people once thought it might be. It's a place where the best and brightest shine. In the dot-com times everyone dropped out of whatever they were doing and suddenly became a web designer. Of course, those were most eagerly hired by dot-bombs, and the first to lose their jobs. > I have high hopes we will come to our senses. A year ago, I had almost > everything in commodities. Now I am switching back to stocks. I just hope I > can ride it out. I don't get the connection. But maybe this is just your way of hinting that you are in it for the money. -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
