Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol!emory!hubcap!billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu
From: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 )
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Education
Message-ID: <7533@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 29 Dec 89 07:20:08 GMT
References: <848@mindlink.UUCP>
Sender: news@hubcap.clemson.edu
Reply-To: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu
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From a684@mindlink.UUCP (Nick Janow):
> How do you retrain someone who has learned one specialty to the exclusion of
> all other knowledge?  If you have learned only the science necessary to be a
> COBOL programmer, how difficult will it be to learn biology?  

   Well, considering Dijkstra's comment regarding the teaching of COBOL 
   as "mental mutilation"...  :-)/2

   Seriously, though, by taking the biology up front you have paid a cost
   in the present rather than paying it IF NECESSARY in the future.  The
   chances are that the cost will really never have to be paid at all, 
   which would make the decision to take the present cost a total waste.
   Even assuming 100% certainty that the cost would have to be paid at
   some point, we can take the financial resources that would have gone
   into paying the present cost, invest them, and have far more money in the
   future -- probably enough to pay for not only the one biology course,
   but an entire genetic engineering program.  We must also consider the
   fact that the passage of time will cause the knowledge acquired earlier
   to be less clearly recalled than the knowledge acquired more recently.
   Finally, if the student is not interested in biology at present, but
   will be highly interested in biology in the future, then it pays to
   give the biology in the future because the retention will be positively
   correlated with the student's interest in the topic.  Thus, on all
   measures, it is far more practical to delay or avoid the costs involved.

> Consider further that fields of specialization are changing rapidly. 
> Some electronics engineers _are_ required to design bio-interfaces; 
> how do they do that if they've never learned basic biology?

   Well, in that case I'd say that their job requires a bio-interface
   specialization, and that will require whatever is necessary to obtain
   that particular certification.

> Generalists evolve; specialists become extinct!

   Humans have a general capability to retrain; this permits them 
   to promptly re-specialize and thereby avoid economic extinction. 


   Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu