I teach, I am also a program director for a college, meaning I run the computer science and information systems departments. It is my responsibility to ensure that students are learning what they need to learn to be either successful in a company or successful as an entrepreneur, either one of those is fine by me.

Most of what he writes I agree with, for some of the other points, well they can cause problems, because the aim of education if we take it in whole means that we have to take the good with the bad. One of my favorite bosses once said, “I like the difficult ones, they always seem to do their best and make my department look good.” I would like to think I encourage that same line of thinking with my students, and take time out to make the material relevant and real to them. I also know that at times I can overwhelm students with the sheer quantity of information that they will be presented with.

1. Become an informed citizen

Yes, and this should be not only encouraged but also enforced, informed citizens are the bedrock of democracy, we need to do better here.

2. Be able to read for pleasure

Pleasure, it is hard to read through computer books for pleasure, it is hard to read business books for pleasure, the fun part is in the application and watching the whole thing come out the way you wanted it to. College textbooks are not written to be pleasurable (maybe this is a problem), they are written to convey information in an archaic format, Microsoft/Google help pages do more than most college textbooks.

3. Be trained in the rudimentary skills necessary for employment

I would hope that we teach more than rudimentary skills, but like all people across all developmental curves, you have those that get it early, in the middle, late, and some never get it at all. With employers focusing on that top ten percent, the other ninety percent of students need to work out ways to survive the company and their employment while working on things that are important to them in their spare time. Work life balance is a precious thing, it allows people to move past the boredom of a job, to discover things that the student is passionate about.

4. Do well on standardized tests

We do not do tests, tests can be faked, and they are not a reliable measure of retained information. I love papers I adore projects.

5. Homogenize society, at least a bit

This is truly a scary thought, we cannot afford a homogenized society, if we are all the same, where will the wonder and discovery come from?

6. Pasteurize out the dangerous ideas

Some of the most dangerous ideas ended up being some of the most fundamental things we know, from Darwin to Plato, from Socrates to Einstein, we need dangerous ideas, they are what helps society run and grow.

7. Give kids something to do while parents work

K-12 maybe, college no.

8. Teach future citizens how to conform

This would be bad, conformity is just as dangerous as homogenization and pasteurization, and they lead to stagnation.

9. Teach future consumers how to desire

TV Does that better than school does

10. Build a social fabric

Yes, but often they are temporary fabrics, people change, and while we might keep in touch (the internet is wonderful for that), we often grow apart. Our social fabrics are dictated by who we are around, work, school, life, friends, and family. All of these are dynamic systems.

11. Create leaders who help us compete on a world stage

That is the intention, and a good thing to aspire to overall. It takes a special teacher to help students reach their potential; some instructors are not good at this.

12. Generate future scientists who will advance medicine and technology

That is also the intention, but we need more CS, Engineering, Science (STEM) degree’s, the current state of graduates in the bachelors programs is very small, 22,000 graduates in 2004, with an expected 12,000 this year across CS and EE. We cannot create future anything if we do not figure out a way to make Computer Science and Engineering sexy again. It does no good to whine about this, we need to fix this, CS is sexy, EE is sexy, if you like puzzles, building, lego’s and robotics, then CS and/or EE is for you. Rather we deal with the stereotype of what a CS/EE graduate looks like and say “we don’t want to be that”.

13. Learn for the sake of learning

For some this is true, perennial students.

14. Help people become interesting and productive

I hope we are doing this, this is the important part.

15. Defang the proletariat

I hope that we are not doing this, the proletariat is an important component of society, rather we need to address the issues that creates a defeated and abused proletariat rather than defang them.

16. Establish a floor below which a typical person is unlikely to fall

No, this is not an educator’s problem nor the job of the school. People will fall as far as they allow themselves to fall, usually through a lack of choices and direction, or the direct result of bad choices. Alcoholics, Drug abusers all have to hit a personal bottom before they reform or change. College can not help someone here.

17. Find and celebrate prodigies, geniuses and the gifted

I hope that we are doing this, we had better be doing this. Unfortunately this is not always the case, some unusual things happen in education at times.

18. Make sure kids learn to exercise, eat right and avoid common health problems

TV would be more effective in this than college.

19. Teach future citizens to obey authority

I hope we are not doing this, we have to question, otherwise how can STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) change the world? We have to question, if we do not we stagnate, we accomplish nothing, our world collapses around us.

20. Teach future employees to do the same

??

21. Increase appreciation for art and culture

If you are in Lit, Arts, etc yes, but CS, well not so much outside of Dilbert, and other comics, super heroes are cool, video games are cool, the usual bit here. Everyone seems to like the Mona Lisa as well, but some of the cubist and surrealism I have a hard time with.

22. Teach creativity and problem solving

I hope we are doing this, this is why projects are great, they show that the student can be creative and problem solve to come up with a working solution to a problem.

23. Minimize public spelling mistakes

This will never happen, word, and word processing has made grammar and spelling a green or red underline. Unless there is an emphasis placed on this skill, college will not change anything here.

24. Increase emotional intelligence

This is dependent upon the person, EQ much like IQ is a test, tests can be wrong. However, in a generalized group of people there are statistics that simply hold true. If there are 100 people, in a room, four will be statistically a sociopath, you can weed for these traits, but you cannot ignore them, and you cannot (at least not yet) the EQ of a sociopath.

25. Decrease crime by teaching civics and ethics

Maybe, crime has many contributing factors outside of civics and ethics. If you have ever seen someone who is addicted and feeding his or her habits by crime, you will see that ethics education does nothing here. If someone is stealing to feed their children, that is another issue altogether. You will not directly decrease crime by teaching these two things, SOX (Sarbanes Oxley) was designed to ensure that another Enron would not happen, yet here we are again with the banking system. Ethics training was front and center in MBA programs worldwide after Enron, yet here we are again.

26. Increase understanding of a life well lived

I hope that we are doing this

27. Make sure the sports teams have enough players

I can still beat, (and I’ll take on) any sports personality in Halo or Gears of war, more fun that way, more level ground, equal abilities. Sports are usually disassociated from college funding lines; they raise their own money and do their own thing independent of academics.

It would be interesting to see what others takes are on this, and to see how education is dealing with the issues we need to deal with. Interesting conversation.

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