You might all look at this article on technology in today's NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16brain.html?hp REH PS thanks for the compliment Arthur.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2010 10:18 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] From Slashdot: Bill Gates on the (non) future of higher education Agree. People who do very well in one area of life often feel compelled to offer suggestions re: other areas about which they know very little. Gates is in that category. Education and learning is far more complex than sitting in front of a computer. There is body language, sound, human interaction, emotional intelligence, etc. In short I agree with Ray who says it better than I can, ......................... Gates didn't have enough education although he is inventive and clever. Like Steve Jobs and the others. They mistake toys for creativity. A piano is not a sonata. And no one can learn a complex psycho-physical activity from the Internet as it is presently constituted -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2010 7:23 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] From Slashdot: Bill Gates on the (non) future of higher education Mike, For what Bill Gates does, the internet may be the way to go but frankly I doubt it. Words are only one seventh of the sensorium and they don't tie all things together. In fact, in sound, words are often blocks to true competence. Education is about competence and frankly, such a comment from an acknowledged genius in one field just proves to me that genius doesn't travel. We could be experiencing the same reality today with Obama. Milton Friedman and the economists have been an unmitigated societal disaster with their genius. Everyone seems to believe that their world is THE world. Wasn't it Russell that said that when you discover the circle of your system, there was always a bigger circle around it? It seems to me that Mr. Gates didn't have enough education although he is inventive and clever. Like Steve Jobs and the others. They mistake toys for creativity. A piano is not a sonata. And no one can learn a complex psycho-physical activity from the Internet as it is presently constituted. Star Trek Commander Data maybe but Star Trek created a world to have that character within. These folks just use the world and it's always smaller than the real world. Russell and Whitehead. That's what I would recommend or learn to play the pipe organ. Make of Bill Gates had to use all of his extremities and understand forms beyond binary code. That's my opinion. I find this terribly depressing as a teacher and as someone who dedicated his life and fortune to opening minds beyond mere symbols. REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Gurstein Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2010 12:27 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: [Futurework] From Slashdot: Bill Gates on the (non) future of higher education http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/08/08/168229/Forget-University-mdash-Use-t he-Web-For-Education-Says-Gates Posted by Soulskill on Sunday August 08, @01:31PM An anonymous reader writes "Bill Gates attended the Techonomy conference earlier this week, and had quite a bold statement to make about the future of education. He believes the Web is where people will be learning within a few years, not colleges and university. During his chat, he said, 'Five years from now on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university.'" Of course, the efficacy of online learning is still in question; some studies have shown a measurable benefit to being physically present in a classroom. Still, online education can clearly reach a much wider range of students. Reader nbauman sent in a related story about MIT's OpenCourseWare, which is finding success in unexpected ways: "50% of visitors self-identified as independent learners unaffiliated with a university." The article also mentions a situation in which a pair of Haitian natives used OCW to get the electrical engineering knowledge they needed to build solar-powered lights that have been deployed in many remote towns and villages. Bill Gates is certainly correct either now or in the near future about the content of education--but that doesn't matter since a/the primary function of higher ed. is credentialling and social sorting. 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