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Learning new and useful skills can accomplish more than any echo chamber jibber jabber on an Internet forum can do. If the skills of the US populace were more varied, competent, and agile, we would be doing a good deal better.
The public education system is a good stepping stone, but there are obvious gaps in many places (even literally with specific regions/districts really getting shafted). What is interesting though is that cheap and available knowledge of new skills and brushing up on fundamentals is now more readily available than it has ever been. However, knowledge of these new avenues for learning has not hit the mainstream as quickly as is perhaps desirable.
For basic skills, there are sites like Khan Academy where you can learn or refresh basic skills in mathematics and other fields in a fairly intuitive way.
For learning the basics of specific skills such as coding (not just practical, but a good exercise in developing your logical facilities) there are things like Code Academy.
For more specific and advanced coursework coursework there are places like Coursera and Udacity
For simple how to and interesting projects to try to learn from there is Instructables
For those who want to learn the basics in a specific field there is often online support and tutorials offered such as Processing for fairly simple programming especially graphical representation of things as well as Arduino for the burgeoning field of physical computing and simple electronic engineering and programming--complete with tutorials, examples, and support forums all of which are free (though you'd have to buy parts for the Arduino which are pretty cheap).
The above are just some of the most prominent and freely available avenues to learn new skills (if anyone has others, feel free to post). The only thing you have to have is access to a computer, access to the internet and some command of the English language--three things that I can safely assume everyone in this forum has and that the majority of the US does, too.
What's more, the US is a particularly good position for learning these skills in a number of ways. The prerequisites I listed are together things that the general populace in the rest of the world do not have. Access to a computer is still currently uncommon in large parts of the world (hell, even reliable electricity is hard to get in some parts) and our computers come loaded with a browser that can interpret a bunch of stuff and text editors that you can code in as well as tons of free software online. Our internet infrastructure, while not the best, is generally more than adequate to access these sites. English is our very dominant language and much of the resources and documentation for these things are either in English or derived in English (as most programming languages are). I've met a lot of people from other parts of the world who have learned through these sites and it's amazing the amount of hacking away at things to get to what they want to they have to engage in simply because they have to learn at least the basics of an entirely new language along the way. The very ability for us as English speakers to simply have a knack for putting in the right terms in a search engine when we need to figure something out or hit a roadblock is an amazing advantage (as well as having a relatively uncensored internet (main counterpoint: China)).
The question is, do you think things like the above are enough to supplement and improve our current workforce such that we have an appreciable turnaround in our economy? It's true that given what we want in terms of quality of life, we might not be able to reach the bare minimums of some third world countries in terms of wages, but instead of engaging in a race to the bottom, how we do already have the resources to create a race to the top where the basic skill level of our workers are high enough that we don't have to race towards that bottom? Also, do you think this sort of one-to-many internet approach to education and skill acquisition could be folded into government programs and our public education system? If so, what are ways we can roll this out and implement it usefully?
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 11-20-2012 at 02:44 PM..
while i agree with you to a point, the problem is the public education system. the NEA, teachers unions, and the federal government all get in the way of proper education. they are the ones that push the social agenda on students rather than teaching them real skills. what needs to happen is eliminate the department of education as a cabinet post, get rid of the NEA, and take power away from the teachers unions and put it in the hands of the local school boards where it belongs.
we also need to get rid of tenure, and force teachers to actually teach in their classes again rather than just be glorified baby sitters.
after that we need to bring back discipline to the classroom, and tell the parents that when their child has failed their grade, they are going to repeat it, and stop letting the students get passed along. and we need the courts to back the school system up on this.
while i agree with you to a point, the problem is the public education system. the NEA, teachers unions, and the federal government all get in the way of proper education. they are the ones that push the social agenda on students rather than teaching them real skills. what needs to happen is eliminate the department of education as a cabinet post, get rid of the NEA, and take power away from the teachers unions and put it in the hands of the local school boards where it belongs.
we also need to get rid of tenure, and force teachers to actually teach in their classes again rather than just be glorified baby sitters.
after that we need to bring back discipline to the classroom, and tell the parents that when their child has failed their grade, they are going to repeat it, and stop letting the students get passed along. and we need the courts to back the school system up on this.
Teachers push the social agenda on students rather than teaching them real skills
Learning basic personal finance and how to balance a checkbook would be a good start.
The term "competitive" is so out of date...we don't need to compete..what for...time for protectionism...you have all you need within your own boarders..why do we have to attempt to get richer and richer and richer and richer? Time to enjoy life and stop being competitive..what is the point...it does not make things better..there are limits to human existence and we have reached ours.
Teachers push the social agenda on students rather than teaching them real skills
Learning basic personal finance and how to balance a checkbook would be a good start.
teachers push the agenda they are told to push by the powers that be. and i agree that learning personal finance would be a good start. teach simple math and reading skills as well.
Parallax is a great educational platform for learning programming for hardware(and learning about electronics). They are in the process of shifting their platform programming language to C/C++:
Parallax, a leading microcontroller manufacturer, has announced the beta release of a C/C++ compiler for the company’s unique multi-core P8X32A Propeller chip.
while i agree with you to a point, the problem is the public education system. the NEA, teachers unions, and the federal government all get in the way of proper education. they are the ones that push the social agenda on students rather than teaching them real skills. what needs to happen is eliminate the department of education as a cabinet post, get rid of the NEA, and take power away from the teachers unions and put it in the hands of the local school boards where it belongs.
we also need to get rid of tenure, and force teachers to actually teach in their classes again rather than just be glorified baby sitters.
after that we need to bring back discipline to the classroom, and tell the parents that when their child has failed their grade, they are going to repeat it, and stop letting the students get passed along. and we need the courts to back the school system up on this.
There seems to be a pretty large disparity within our public education system though where there are many schools that perform very well and then other schools which do not. I do think there needs to be higher standards for teachers, but part of it I think is that the quality level of teachers needs to be higher, and that sort of means having actual more benefits to entice people who are intelligent to come to school. I do agree that a tenure track of sort has to be removed or at least be modified with a heavy emphasis on performance checks. I'm not sure about what social agenda you are talking about though, because that can be a whole host of things, but there didn't seem to be any flagrant distortions of reality in the curricula for the kids I've tutored. Also, why does getting rid of the DOE cabinet post make sense? I think there does need to be a coordinated effort because there is a lot of bad regional variation and I do think we need to create a future competitive workforce nationwide and not just in parts.
All of this is an aside of sorts, since I was thinking about the possible benefits for the US in terms of what's freely available online (and not online courses that charge money--those are often pretty useless compared to the ones I put up above). I don't think it's just to supplement public schools though or are for children--these are actual good for adults who need to learn new skill sets as global trade liberalization and the free market means that we have to be a lot more agile in developing new skills in order to compete. Now, do you think you personally would have the willpower to go through some of these in order to brush up on fundamentals or to learn new skills?
The term "competitive" is so out of date...we don't need to compete..what for...time for protectionism...you have all you need within your own boarders..why do we have to attempt to get richer and richer and richer and richer? Time to enjoy life and stop being competitive..what is the point...it does not make things better..there are limits to human existence and we have reached ours.
Well, if you're going to go free market, then you're going to have deal with the consequences. The US certainly has been big on spreading that to other nations and has been loud in proclaiming the principles of a free market, so it's best we buck up and deal with it. This means competition and pretty heavy competition at that.
The term "competitive" is so out of date...we don't need to compete..what for...time for protectionism...you have all you need within your own boarders..why do we have to attempt to get richer and richer and richer and richer? Time to enjoy life and stop being competitive..what is the point...it does not make things better..there are limits to human existence and we have reached ours.
I think competition is a good thing, so long as the game isn't rigged like it is currently where the government picks winners and losers. However; I do agree with you on the point that we have a vast amount of resources within our own borders, and should utilize them.
Parallax is a great educational platform for learning programming for hardware(and learning about electronics). They are in the process of shifting their platform programming language to C/C++:
Parallax, a leading microcontroller manufacturer, has announced the beta release of a C/C++ compiler for the company’s unique multi-core P8X32A Propeller chip.
Nice, real nice. Looks like someone actually read the topic.
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