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On 07/12/06, paul sutton <zleap@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > No we don't we need to spend money and teach kids reading, writing and > maths, and how to respect authority, there are still kids leaving > primary at 11 unable to read properly. Well, yes - but if they want to inject a ton of cash to create 'knowledge workers' then they aren't going to get much by blowing it on un-necessary IT systems implemented and used by people who know very little IT, and I'm not happy with the quality of IT teaching in Schools and Colleges purely for selfish reasons as those are the kids we'll be recruiting in a few years. > not only that england needs people with other skils, e.g building, > plumbing etc, something that you can do without being able to use a > computer, ok use a computer for accounts or keeping track of clients, > but pen and ink can do that, you don't need a comuter to mix cement > and stick bricks to gether or hit nails in to wood. Indeed yes. I don't think kids need computers in classes outside of using them to learn how to use them for business, programming or maybe physics or science. Ditto whiteboards - I found a traditional whiteboard just fine all the way through school, college and university - it forces the person using it to keep diagrams simple, and explain what they're drawing as they do it - electric whiteboards will inevitably introduce yet more awful powerpoint-itus, with over-complex diagrams, too much text, etc that'll be harder to take in. Also I still think much of the money would be better spent on giving kids decent food - even after the jamie oliver dinnerlady campaign, school food is given a tiny tiny budget, and you'll find the kids eating crap will be the ones stopping the others from learning by requiring all the attention, causing distractions or bullying. > as people have said before by the time kids leave school it will have > changed dramatically anyway. Quite. This is the case in university, and even more so in school - where anybody specialising is likely to spend another 2 to 6 years studying. For instance - at college I used COBOL, Pascal and DataEase - 0 use to me when I went to Uni, at Uni I also learnt the OSI network stack (now an academic curiosity), Netware Directory Services (an ancient version) and an ancient version of Access, and X.25, and a ton of Telephony - all of which are now utterly out of date. The really useful stuff was almost timeless : Security, Network Design, TCP/IP, Distributed/Parallel Processing, C++, electronics, system integration, maths & stats, business, etc. Cheers, A. -- http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk LAMP System Integration, Development and Hosting -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html