Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!decvax!ucbvax!pasteur!ames!hao!gatech!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Education (was: Becoming CAI literate)
Message-ID: <3509@killer.UUCP>
Date: 27 Feb 88 06:45:04 GMT
References: <1988Feb23.045155.16293@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: Bayou Telecommunications
Lines: 48

in article <1988Feb23.045155.16293@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>, tjhorton@ai.toronto.edu ("Timothy J. Horton") says:
> A comprehensive answer to educational rednecks:
> 
> "Teens need less school -- not  more"
> by  Frank Jones
> Toronto Star, Feb 22, page C1
...
> 
> "For the rest, the real need is to get them  reading  and writing
> and  then  get them through high school as quickly and painlessly
> as possible and out into the world of  jobs;  ...  for most of us
> the real interest  in ideas and knowledge  comes later,  when the
> hectic teen years are  behind us.  And that's  why we should  cut
> back on teenage schooling  and put even more effort  into selling
> continuing  education  --  getting people back  into school  when
> they're good and ready.

Somewhat good point. After all, the average age of U.S. college students is 26
(or somewhere around there). Norman Spinrad once wrote about a society where
the late teen years were used to figure out what you wanted to do with your
life, instead of schooling.

However, there's a problem. I know several people who've managed to earn their
GED (high school equivalency) in their spare time. But if you want to go
further, our universities and employers are not up to the task. For example, I
know someone who works in the local power plant who's interested in going for
a CS degree. He's reasonably intelligent, quite interested (he's picked up
enough about programming to do all their control software, he's interested in
learning the "why" of it now), and fairly motivated (working in a power plant
is BORING most of the time... just sit there and watch dials). The problem? He
has a wife and a 5 year old kid, and a picture-book house in the suburbs with
a 20 year mortgage.  Why's that a problem? Because he can't afford to quit
work.  The power plant isn't willing to schedule him so that he'd have time to
go to school -- and the local university doesn't have night classes for the
more advanced CS courses (they've tried, but only 4 or 5 people ever
registered for the class -- automatic cancellation of the class, at a public
university). He's just an example, it's a general problem, except possibly in
a few big-city areas (in which only a small percentage of our population
lives). 

Read Robert Frost's poem "The Road Untaken" if you didn't understand what I
said above....

--
Eric Lee Green  elg@usl.CSNET     Asimov Cocktail,n., A verbal bomb
{cbosgd,ihnp4}!killer!elg              detonated by the mention of any
Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191              subject, resulting in an explosion
Lafayette, LA 70509                    of at least 5,000 words.