Is technical education getting too...technical?

[Nessus]

I believe in well-rounded educations, and that includes technical knowledge for those who may not pursue technical fields. Scientists aren't expected to be totally ignorant of history.

We're still talking past another, beating around a bush. Would it not be more prudent to provide a well-rounded education before education towards specialization? Is it really so difficult to grasp that the Finnish SS is not a direct analogue of the US high school? What?

Pro-tip: You don't come off that "well rounded" prefacing things with "[you] believe".

[Flixy]

Isn't a well rounded education the point of high school? The basic knowledge and all that. I consider myself reasonably knowledgeable, but my university education its almost exclusively math and physics. I consider higher education to be one of specialization. And you learn more general skills like critical thinking and problem solving, of course.

[Ominous Gamer]

Its common over here for the first ~2 years of college to be wasted on relearning high school topics. Earning credits that can be transferred into almost any major. Its why community colleges are so popular (as well as transferring out of them). As well as AP classes and dual enrollment during high school; classes that show its more then possible for teens in this age range to develop an acceptable understanding of the topics.

[Loki]

Isn't a well rounded education the point of high school? The basic knowledge and all that. I consider myself reasonably knowledgeable, but my university education its almost exclusively math and physics. I consider higher education to be one of specialization. And you learn more general skills like critical thinking and problem solving, of course.

What kind of information do you really think you could teach 14-17-year-olds?

[Nessus]

What kind of information do you really think you could teach 14-17-year-olds?

Look out commander Flix, this is a Romulan trap!

also obligatory joke answer about Russian poetry being part of things mandatory in US universities

Wait, was it Russian fairy tales? Anyhoo

[Loki]

You expect most people to understand science even though most people don't major in science and under your system don't have much of an ability to take classes in it. You expect people to be politically literate, but don't expect them to take any classes in history or politics once they hit 18. Then you're surprised that people hold ridiculous beliefs?

[Dreadnaught]

We're still talking past another, beating around a bush. Would it not be more prudent to provide a well-rounded education before education towards specialization? Is it really so difficult to grasp that the Finnish SS is not a direct analogue of the US high school? What?

Pro-tip: You don't come off that "well rounded" prefacing things with "[you] believe".

For fuck's sake, we aren't talking past each other or beating around a bush. Unless of course you are. There is a cultural difference here that we're both acknowledging and were discussing.

Saying "I believe" is a way of being cordial. It's how people state their beliefs while not insisting that their values are unequivocally correct. WTF does that have to do with a "well-rounded" education? If anything, it's a hallmark of being a well-rounded personality.

I don't understand why these elementary discussions are so difficult for you. This is what I mean when I say you see me nefariously lurking at every turn. What the hell is your problem?

[Nessus]

For fuck's sake, we aren't talking past each other or beating around a bush. Unless of course you are. There is a cultural difference here that we're both acknowledging and were discussing.

Saying "I believe" is a way of being cordial. It's how people state their beliefs while not insisting that their values are unequivocally correct. WTF does that have to do with a "well-rounded" education? If anything, it's a hallmark of being a well-rounded personality.

I don't understand why these elementary discussions are so difficult for you. This is what I mean when I say you see me nefariously lurking at every turn. What the hell is your problem?

Picture from the Zelda animated series where the male protagonist exclaims "excuse me princess"

[Nessus]

You expect most people to understand science even though most people don't major in science and under your system don't have much of an ability to take classes in it. You expect people to be politically literate, but don't expect them to take any classes in history or politics once they hit 18. Then you're surprised that people hold ridiculous beliefs?

You expect poor, uneducated teens to form unsexual households for financial reasons. Then you're surprised hargle bargle?

Not every child has to attend university. It is not necessarily the job of a university to provide the base-line, bottom of the barrel education for every Jane and Joe.

And hold on a darn minute, what is "my system" here?

[Dreadnaught]

Picture from the Zelda animated series where the male protagonist exclaims "excuse me princess"

Go ahead, shuffle your feet and look at the ground.

For your own ungrounded reasons, you're unable to hold an adult conversation with me about something as open-ended and eminently discussable as education.

[Nessus]

Go ahead, shuffle your feet and look at the ground.

For your own ungrounded reasons, you're unable to hold an adult conversation with me about something as open-ended and eminently discussable as education.

What reasons would those be?

[Loki]

You expect poor, uneducated teens to form unsexual households for financial reasons. Then you're surprised hargle bargle?

Not every child has to attend university. It is not necessarily the job of a university to provide the base-line, bottom of the barrel education for every Jane and Joe.

And hold on a darn minute, what is "my system" here?

We both live in a democracy, which means that the votes of these people matter. Do you really want people who are illiterate about science and about politics voting on questions of science?

[Nessus]

We both live in a democracy, which means that the votes of these people matter. Do you really want people who are illiterate about science and about politics voting on questions of science?

It is hardly a secret Plato was a proto-fascist, Loki. What are you trying to say?

[Loki]

My point is that if you don't want idiotic political outcomes, you shouldn't be trying to create a nation of idiots.

[Nessus]

My point is that if you don't want idiotic political outcomes, you shouldn't be trying to create a nation of idiots.

The only way to create a nation of non-idiots is mandated university education across all fields? There is no way this can be facilitated in, oh I dunno, the earlier stages of public education? FUCK

[Ominous Gamer]

Do you really want people who are illiterate about science and about politics voting on questions of science?

and your making this assumption because you don't believe the ground work they set during what would be our high school years is good enough?

damnit, Ness just beat me to the punchline.

[Nessus]

and your making this assumption because you don't believe the ground work they set during what would be our high school years is good enough?

damnit, Ness just beat me to the punchline.

To be fair, our SS seems to rank higher than your "high school" in edumacational studies, so

We can't blame 'em

[Nessus]

Wait, is that true? Is the SS all a lie? Do we only perform better before that magical line?

[LittleFuzzy]

The only reason someone (sensible) would take even an undergrad course in physics in a Finnish university would be their desire to work in a field that does research or development in the natural sciences. I doubt we have a single humanities major in our freshman class right now, but I'm not certain enough to propose a wager to you. (I could find out, though) This is kind of what I mean by the cultural difference, our educational systems are designed and built rather differently. If one wants to be a journalist, they go to a vocational, I guess "college" could be an acceptable term?, for a journalism degree. They don't go to uni to faff off getting a "rounded education", majoring in English lit or what have you. And so on.

The "culling" that so alarmed you is exactly because we want, out of our freshmen, the people we're interested in training into experts in their field of choice within the faculty.

Seeking to wash people out is an entirely different issue from what people are getting educated in. Whether a particular education should be well-rounded or not is one issue, whether a, say medical program, should be seeking to drive out people interested in that education because they wouldn't be able to hack a surgical residency is a different topic. I mentioned both in my post as an illustration of how I didn't think the differences in perspective were cultural. Illusions certainly isn't a representative of Finnish *or Dutch* culture and pedagogy and he seems to feel the same way you do on the latter topic.

[Flixy]

The point isn't really to wash people out on purpose, the point is that universities here are the highest level of education, and the level is kept high. Therefore, you also need it to be hard. I'm against driving people out, do I'm all for changes that keep people from dropping out unnecessarily. On the other hand, you cannot do that by dumbing down, that'd be defeating the entire purpose. Weeding out those who aren't up for it isn't a bad thing! Not everybody who is interested is cut out for it, after all. Better to lose then quickly, for all sides. The issue is driving away those that are capable, but scared away in the beginning.

Also, loki, in 'your system', there seems to be no lack of 'ridiculous beliefs' or 'idiotic political outcomes, so there you go.

[CitizenCain]

Science, technology, engineering and math majors who stay in a related profession had average annual earnings of $78,550 in 2009, but those who decided to go into managerial and professional positions made more than $102,000, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

"If you're a high math student in America, from a purely economic point of view, it's crazy to go into STEM," says Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown center.

There ya go. You can sum up that whole problem by saying [most] managers and executives get paid way too much to do... basically nothing. Not really something addressable by education.

[Illusions]

By the same token, the fact that you and Illusions both see one of the purposes of university programs to be driving out "unsuitable" students, something which strikes me as incredibly counter to the prime purpose of education and teaching is plainly not a cultural difference between us but rising from some other set of expectations and conceptions.

Unless you can suggest how to formulate a class in experiencing, dealing with, and overcoming specific occupational stresses, in a natural manner, then the best way to get students used to them, and educate them about them, is to have it as part of the existing curriculum. You'll either already possess the innate ability to deal with them, learn to deal with them, or wash out (which would mean that you wouldn't have made it in your chosen profession anyway, and your degree claiming you could would be worthless). The reason I was able to deal with things in my profession, like having a deadline of tomorrow dumped on you for something everyone quoted three or more days for, was that it was something I had already dealt with, and knew how to deal with it. The stress, deadlines, workload, what was expected of me, etc. I had already experienced and learned to deal with in my classes. Taking it out would have left me naive and unprepared. So the options really are:

1) We create a controlled crucible for students, and concentrate it into a single class where the students are aware they're being put through it, and grade them on it (which, at least to me, would make the experience less real).

2) We keep the status quo of an entire curriculum for certain professions being the crucible.

3) We coddle them, and throw them unprepared for the worst (or even average) that their profession has to offer.

[CitizenCain]

Makes higher education sound a lot like "vocational training," and that's not what university ought to be about.

[agamemnus]

Loki, your premise that Calculus is hard is incorrect. It can be taught in such a way as to confuse people. Even Algebra can be taught both ways; I've seen my fellow students become totally confused because of the way the teacher presented topics.

I would, however, like someone to teach a course on propositional calculus that's not intended for robots. I had to try to learn this in a databases course over the course of a about one week. It was a total disaster, at least for me. It seemed that everyone else understood, and not just understood, but were able to solve problems with complex logic statements and were able to translate one form of logic to another without skipping a beat. They were all useless robots.

[Illusions]

Makes higher education sound a lot like "vocational training," and that's not what university ought to be about.

Unless you're getting a degree solely for the knowledge, and not for the application, a student should understand what applying their knowledge is going to entail.

[CitizenCain]

So, "dealing with asshole bosses and impossible deadlines 101" should be a university-level course now? Gimmie a break.

There's a big difference between teaching students how to apply say, their knowledge of electrical engineering into making an IC and like that there, and what you're proposing, which falls under the category of "life skills" and/or "vocational training."

[Illusions]

There's a big difference between teaching students how to apply say, their knowledge of electrical engineering into making an IC and like that there, and what you're proposing

What if the application part is dry, boring, tedious, difficult, stressful, etc. As an example, you can probably give someone the knowledge of how to set up a render, but they won't get to experience the boredom, tedium, or stress of having to sit through one, or possibly re-start it partway through because something screwed up, until they actually do. Then what good would it be if they have knowledge of rendering a scene, but not the actual ability to do so?

[LittleFuzzy]

Unless you can suggest how to formulate a class in experiencing, dealing with, and overcoming specific occupational stresses, in a natural manner, then the best way to get students used to them, and educate them about them, is to have it as part of the existing curriculum. You'll either already possess the innate ability to deal with them, learn to deal with them, or wash out (which would mean that you wouldn't have made it in your chosen profession anyway, and your degree claiming you could would be worthless). The reason I was able to deal with things in my profession, like having a deadline of tomorrow dumped on you for something everyone quoted three or more days for, was that it was something I had already dealt with, and knew how to deal with it. The stress, deadlines, workload, what was expected of me, etc. I had already experienced and learned to deal with in my classes. Taking it out would have left me naive and unprepared. So the options really are:

1) We create a controlled crucible for students, and concentrate it into a single class where the students are aware they're being put through it, and grade them on it (which, at least to me, would make the experience less real).

2) We keep the status quo of an entire curriculum for certain professions being the crucible.

3) We coddle them, and throw them unprepared for the worst (or even average) that their profession has to offer.

*shrugs* It may be just be an expression that I value knowledge for knowledge's sake, but it seems to me that the purpose of an educational institute is to teach and educate more than it is to make certain people are "prepared" for a specific job. Most education, even technical education, can be put to diverse uses, not just the "obvious" use a majority of those who get it use it for. Nessus talked about how journalists should go get a journalism degree, but I know that I get driven nuts by the poor quality of reporting because journalists don't understand the topics they're disseminating. We'd be better off if people who had significant science education were the ones doing most of the writing about it. A while ago I recall we talked about STEM managers who, even if they couldn't hack doing the real work themselves were still an improvement over the many, many managers just working off an MBA. And then there's the educational field itself. The weeding you're talking about seems to me to be something better left for accreditation programs, probationary periods, and the like.

[CitizenCain]

What if the application part is dry, boring, tedious, difficult, stressful, etc. As an example, you can probably give someone the knowledge of how to set up a render, but they won't get to experience the boredom, tedium, or stress of having to sit through one, or possibly re-start it partway through because something screwed up, until they actually do. Then what good would it be if they have knowledge of rendering a scene, but not the actual ability to do so?

And shit, if you're training soldiers, you may as well have them go out and shoot some random person so they know how to do it, right?

Sitting through a days-long render is not a "skill," nor is it something that needs to be taught, anymore than sitting around with my thumb up my ass waiting on a compile job to finish was a requisite part of learning how to code. Granted, the worst-kept secret of the "technology" sector is that most of your time will probably be spent waiting on a computer to do something, but this knowledge can be imparted in a few short words and does not require a university-level "waiting on your computer" course.

The part of your job that requires education and training and skill is setting up the render in the first place, so you actually get the desired outcome after the render's finished, not the waiting on the rendering to complete itself. And really, it's pretty disingenuous of you to hold out waiting on a [very big] computation to finish as a job skill or professional requirement, especially since it's not like you don't have other things to do during those hours or days the computers are busy cranking away.

[Khendraja'aro]

You expect most people to understand science even though most people don't major in science and under your system don't have much of an ability to take classes in it. You expect people to be politically literate, but don't expect them to take any classes in history or politics once they hit 18. Then you're surprised that people hold ridiculous beliefs?

Does that mean university for everyone or what?