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From: matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.math,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Student preparedness
Message-ID: <19214@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 19 Jan 89 03:34:38 GMT
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Reply-To: matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff)
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In article <5392@pdn.UUCP> reggie@pdn.UUCP (George W. Leach) writes:

>In article <19145@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff) writes:
>>In article <5354@pdn.UUCP> reggie@pdn.UUCP (George W. Leach) writes:

%>>     That is unfortunate.  Years ago the same was true in this country.
%>>The science and math courses were everything and who cares if you can
%>>speak, read or write.  However, communication skill play a very important
%>>part in a technical person's life and should not be ignored.

>>Agreed.  But do you really feel that things have improved in this respect
>>in U.S. education?

%  Oh, no!  I didn't mean to imply that this is not a problem here.  I feel
%that we are at least more aware of the problem these days, but not enough
%is being done about it.

*Who* is aware of the problem?  Certainly managers in industry are painfully
aware of it, especially on the written side.  University educators are
vaguely aware of it.  But the *students* are not aware of it at all.  They
would be shocked to know how much of ordinary work in the real world
consists of communication  --  holding meetings, writing reports, 
explaining things to others, dealing with users of the company's products,
etc.  

%>>      I agree!  I would never even think about trying to either attent a
%>>university or land a job in France.  My two years of high school French
%>>are not enough.  Yet, I get the feeling that many enter this country will
%>>less preparation than that!  Obviously, somehow they are hearing that it
% 						 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
%>>is not all that important to get into an American university or to get a job.
%  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>>It's not so much that they hear this explicitly, but they do hear all
>>the success stories of others, and emulate them.  Unfortunately, they
>>do NOT hear that these people found it much harder to get their first
>>job than it should have been, and that these people got jobs which were
>>not quite up to their qualifications, and that these people had trouble
>>getting promotions later on, all due at least in part to poor verbal
>>skills.

%     It sounds like what many of the immigrants of the earlier part of
%this century heard: "the streets are paved with gold".

Yes, and it's true!  I believe that the average salary for an engineer
in Taiwan is about $5,000, and of course a lot lower than that in China
and India.  When word gets back home that Wang Ai Qian has bought a
$500,000 house and is running his own business in addition to his regular
job with Sun Microsystems, it looks very attractive indeed.  [But,
apparently, it's much less attractive to Americans.  Why?]

>>Moreover, I'm not sure that your example is directly comparable.  There
>>are so many Chinese immigrants working in the Silicon Valley that many
>>of them don't have to speak English very much at work.  My wife speaks
>>Mandarin most of the time at work there.

%   True!  In the New York/New Jersey area there are enough Chinese who
%work in certain places that they can band together and speak their
%native tongue as well.  In fact, I have known people who came to this
%country and settled in Chinatown, in lower Manhattan, where the society
%very much mirrors their homeland.  New York is rather unique in this
%respect.  There are many ethnic neighborhoods there.

Actually, the Chinatown example is not what I meant.  You won't find many
professional people living in Chinatown.  The residents there are "normal"
immigrants, i.e. who immigrated through U.S. relatives instead of on the
basis of professional skills.  

    Norm