Do you really expect MPs to know computer programming, bricklaying and have a commercial drivers license? Do they have to know rocket science to allocate funds for orbiting satellites?
I think leaders should have appropriate qualifications to lead which usually means they know how to find good people to advise them on all of these topics. If you think you know better, why not offer your services?
Anyone can complain. It's much harder to help.
-- Rick
No, but they'd make far better representatives if they had significant experience outside of the political science/party hack/lawyer straitjacket.
It would also help if they were numerate enough to be suspicious when advisors, civil servants or lobbyists were advising them to waste money.
Because I know my limitations: I'm a somewhat numerate technician type, not a speech-maker or political animal.
-- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org |
So they can't do their job of leading because they can't do your job, but you are completely qualified to judge how they do their job even though you acknowledge that you would be even worse at it?
I think you have a very interesting view of the world...
-- Rick
Why do you object to politicians studying for, and getting apprenticed in, the job they wish to take up? Do you expect engineers to do a spell on their local council before they take a job designing computers?
100% agree with that
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Education policies are often geared towards preparing students for the workforce, and that dictates curriculum and funding. What the teachers would like to teach and the students would like to learn are entirely different beasts from what businesses demand that politicians produce.
My high school "ICT" curriculum was very similar: typing, word processing, maybe a little MathBlaster or geography quiz... The computer lab teacher kept the lab open for extracurricular activities, though, and gathered the predictable horde of gamers, programmers and hackers. He knew damn well that the curriculum was frighteningly insufficient and believed that kids could and should be encouraged to do more.
His unorthodox security policies still strike me as unusually enlightened: if you could hack the network and get root, he'd make you a system administrator and give you a key to use the lab unattended during school hours.
I am positive that now, as then, he'd have an easier time getting funding for another MS Office license than a RaspPi. But I'm just as certain that if someone dropped a couple RaspPis in the lab that they'd be a crowd around them for several hours every day.
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And you are taking tings to literally. Most of the current top encumbants of the House of Commons have very little experience of industry and the real "working mans" world. As pointed out above they came through the education system (many through a very priviledged part of the education system) straight into the political arena. The education system is very sheltered and does very little in relation to "life skills", they don't really know what it means to try and
Their worldly experience is very narrow and their practical/technical knowledge very blinkered. How many of the top politicans have science rather than arts degrees? Are there any without a degree?
Yes they do use advisors but if the advisor doesn't come up with the answers that fit the current political whim those advisory reports are just quietly put on a shelf and ignored.
Then of course there is the methodolgy and process of selecting the advisors in the first place. The politicians wanting a particular answer select the advisors...
Douglas Adams -
- One of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them: It is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. Anyone who is capable of getting themselves into a position of power should on no account be allowed to do the job. Another problem with governing people is people.
-- Cheers Dave.
That's not the problem: the problem is that they know sod-all about anything else and have often not really met anybody outside their sheltered little circle, starting from their private schools, continuing with political university degrees and then into the political party of their choice.
Do you *really* want a Defence Minister who hasn't even been in the scouts or the school/uni cadet unit, a Finance Minister with no training in finance or economics or a Minister of Science & Technology without at least some STEM background? Guess what: that's exactly what we've got here.
You can check it out yourself: look up your Prez/PM, party leaders and the heads of your govt's technical departments anfd see how many of them have any experience outside the political cloisters.
I've done that for our current shower and remain impressed by their total lack of experience outside politics. Churchill had military background and was quite a decent bricklayer and painter (both, IIRC, self taught. Reagan was an actor - not such a bad starting point for a politician.
Don't be silly. But, I do expect councillors to have some work experience outside politics: without it they'll be pretty damn useless. Oh, wait....
-- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org |
Nice one: if your haven't already, find a read a copy of Tracy Kidder's "The Soul Of A New Machine". Its the inside story of people and the process behind the design and roll-out of the Data General Eagle Project minicomputer series. Old history now, but that's exactly the way they trained and selected the new grads that wrote the OS.
-- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org |
Another interesting read is "The Cuckoo's Nest" by Clifford Stoll. About tracking down a worm that almost paralysed te Internet for several days.
-- Alan Adams, from Northamptonshire alan@adamshome.org.uk http://www.nckc.org.uk/
How does that differ from a computer programmer or a doctor?
If you speak to the users of anything designed by an engineer, let alone a computer programmer, and they will tell you that the problem with the equipment is because the designer has no practical experience in using it. Why is it OK for engineers to come straight out of University, work for some other engineers and then be let loose on the public but it is not acceptable for politicians to have a similar professional background?
Leonardo da Vinci was a talented painter and architect. An excellent starting point for an engineer. Alas, in this age of specialisation, an artist could never get a job designing military equipment!
Yes wait. Like you, their talent for the job is measured by getting it, keeping it and advancing in it.
On 2/18/2015 5:42 AM, Dave Liquorice wrote: >
Now you are getting some traction.
-- Rick
All of this is just your perception of how politics works. I think you as much about politics as your representatives know about your job. That is usually the real problem with politics. Politicians are severely hamstrung by the insane perceptions of the people they represent.
-- Rick
O RLY?
Yes I know it's Wikipedia, but the defense career is true.
"Why were Raspberry Pis created in the first place???"
It probably needs explaining to those who discovered the RPi from clickbaitaday and geekfashionistas websites that the whole thing was _created_ because the schools failed.
The original plan (before Eben became the Steve Jobs of the Maker set) was to get the hardware into the hands of Young Nerds and to allow them to repeat the same thing 'we' did with microcomputers 30 years ago-- teach themselves.
To the OP, I'd recommend completely forgetting trying educators (who will throw the things in the bin: teachers aren't allowed to give out `gifts) or charities (that get picked clean by hoarders and eBay hockers), and instead ask around your personal network to find out who has a nerd child and to gift it to them, asking "Could you figure out how to use this by yourself?"
-- Chris,,
Absolutely!
-- Alex
Or veer from the curiculem. *If* there is a teacher running an after school maths/science/IT club that is just a club not an adjunduct to the curiculem teaching they might take it on. But *they* need have all the other bits, PSU, keyboard, mouse, HDMI monitor & cable, etc.
*They* also need to have a reasonable grasp of how computer hardware works, familiar with the command line, know the fundementals of Python etc. All a rather big ask... +1-- Cheers Dave.
It is a lot to ask of a child, yes. However, like many of my generation (I'm 68) I'm self-taught. No text-books, just manuals and, eventually, the Internet. Today?s kids have that great advantage over us. Access to hardware was the key for me.
-- Alex
On 02/22/15, Chris Baird pondered and said... CB> "Why were Raspberry Pis created in the first place???" CB> CB> It probably needs explaining to those who discovered the RPi from CB> clickbaitaday and geekfashionistas websites that the whole thing was CB> _created_ because the schools failed.
Yep I understood they were developed to offer school aged children an affordable tool to use to learn to code etc. Sound right?
-- `I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid, and I'm not going' - Kerr Avon, Blake's 7 Agency BBS, New Zealand | bbs.geek.nz | telnet: agency.bbs.geek.nz:23
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It's a lot to ask of a science/maths/IT teacher, they don't need to have that knowledge to stuff the curiculem into kids heads. IT really only covers how to use Word, Powerpoint and Excel, it doesn't cover the nuts and bolts of computers or networks very well and has very little programming. That that it does have is generally in educational only languages/packages, not ones that are used in the real world.
A few years behind you but also largly self taught, if I have an itch I scratch it and find the information required. However The Lad (15) is doing a BTEC Level 3 course (effectively and an A Level) in Electronics and that has highighted that even though my knowledge is good and functional there are huge gaps where I have to fall back to first principles and work things out (or hit google...).
These days that's not so critical. The Lad has "built" an 8 bit adder with in/out registers etc in Minecraft.
-- Cheers Dave.
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