5 ms·

"There was a time when most people could make a career out of a skill, or stay within the same type of job, but workers today constantly need to adapt. They mus

"There was a time when most people could make a career out of a skill, or stay within the same type of job, but workers today constantly need to adapt. They must become lifelong learners: Teach a student one skill and you got him one job; teach a student to learn and you got him lifetime employment." It's far from clear to me that any beyond a small percentage of people generally, but perhaps Americans in particular, have the capacity to become lifelong learners. Not saying folks are stupid -- the problem isn't a lack of raw cognitive capacity, IMHO. What actually makes someone a lifelong learner? Curiosity. If you don't _want_ to learn, it's going to be very difficult to do so, except perhaps while under the gun for short periods of time. And, unfortunately, our education system seems ideally tailored for stamping out children's natural curiosity. If that sounds overly pessimistic, I'd welcome a demonstration to the contrary. I feel that the answer is basically "let's fix our education system," which I -- again, perhaps overly pessimistically -- believe to be politically impossible.

KGIII 9y ago
I kinda disagree. It is a long story. I will skip a lot and make it as brief as I can. I used to own my own company. It has long since been sold and I am retired. We modeled traffic and I helped bring traffic modeling to the computer age. This was way back in the dark ages of the early 1990s, when you actually had to work to find people who could write good code. You also had to pay them a goodly amount of money. One of the things I offered was to help with continued education. For example, we had one lady who was a secretary and she wanted to learn to code. So, we sent her to school part time, on our dime, and she eventually found a home in QA. When we began to provision services in other areas, besides vehicular modeling for municipalities, I sent people to get the training they felt they needed. I'd even go with them, if I had time and it would benefit me. I love Defcon, and have gone even after retiring. We'd get a local university to do some research and then poach the folks who stood out - and help them complete their education. Quite a few acted on this and I have to say we benefited greatly from this. I don't have exact numbers but it was well over a third. So, in my experience, they want the education. In my experience, they can be educated. Maybe try offering to pay for it, if you're in a position to make that choice? Cover their total costs - including ensuring they can afford the time. In my case, there weren't exactly a whole lot of traffic engineers. We had to make them, and we did.
- uiri 9y ago
  I think that your company had to send its employees off to formal education in a classroom (or similar) setting is indicative of the problem highlighted by the person you are replying to. Your employees would not have been anywhere near as successful with some combination of textbook, lectures on video (e.g. on VHS), and a study group made up of other employees. Lifelong learning means being able to acquire new knowledge and skills outside of the traditional educational setting. Often, a University will claim that its students are not there to learn specific subjects but to learn how to learn. A lot of that learning is studying and solving problems outside of lecture time. These are the skills which are lacking because of a cultural perception that learning happens in a class.
  - dv_dt 9y ago
    I think the resources of the employee are more the constraint than the manner of education - especially on the low end of the salary scale, both money but also available and/or ofsettable time. Without support of the employer, especially hourly employees would have a much more difficult time re-training.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      In our case, they were still given adequate salary. "I want to learn to..." "What do you need from me in order to...?" I've covered everything from salary to child care. By the way, the costs for salary and benefits were a fairly small percentage of overhead. A decent print room can be more expensive than even the highest paid employee.
      - dv_dt 9y ago
        That is wonderful, but I feel that employers with the wisdom to implement policies like yours have been shrinking in number. I think this is something of the consequence of making every person individually carry their own financial weight, resulting in bad public and private policies in a number of areas. But it's the pressure on businesses to extract maximized profit in their 'core competitve area' too... it leads naturally to the thought that employees should pay their own time and money for their own training. I think every suffers a little loss of efficiency in that way.
Alex3917 9y ago
> What actually makes someone a lifelong learner? Curiosity. A lot of people, maybe most, can't learn from written text, they need to someone to explain things to them in person. This tends to come off as a lack of curiosity, but often there is some underlying learning issue that people are disguising by pretending they don't care or whatever.
- imh 9y ago
  I've never heard that before. Do you have any sources for that?
  - Alex3917 9y ago
    Looking at the results of the National Adult Literacy Survey would be a good place to start.
vikp 9y ago
I've worked across a variety of industries, from warehouses to factories to big government bureaucracies to startups. I'd argue that the problem isn't that people don't have the curiosity to become lifelong learners. Almost everyone is enthusiastic about something (most people have hobbies they spend their own time on). The problem is that their workplace (and to some extent, society) don't reward curiosity. If you're a programmer who works at startups, it's easy to think of learning as part of the job -- your tools and conditions are constantly shifting, which makes learning part of the work culture. Unfortunately, most industries don't work that way. At a warehouse, you do the same thing from the first day you start to the day you leave. It's much the same in the government and at other large bureaucracies. The problem here isn't with our educational system, it's with the modes in which we work. And to be honest, that's fine. Most people who work in industries that have static work conditions optimize for other things, like family time. It's also very hard to see outside of your silo and imagine a future where you're doing different work. Most people are optimizing their life for right now, not their theoretical career 10 years out. Unfortunately, there are fewer stable lifelong factory jobs every year. This forces people to move outside their comfort zone, which makes lifelong learning necessary. I don't have an answer to the problem, but some potential solutions are: * Reward employees for taking time outside of work to learn skills * Show people examples of others like them who have learned for motivation * Find something a person is really interested in (not because it's a "valuable skill", but just because they think it's cool), and help them take small steps to start learning it Basically, I think it's possible to help people transition to new careers further into their lives than you do. I don't think it's ever too late for someone to learn a new skill, if they have the right incentives.
csa 9y ago
> It's far from clear to me that any beyond a small percentage of people generally, but perhaps Americans in particular, have the capacity to become lifelong learners. This is very much incorrect, although I imagine that there is an abundance of anecdata that supports your hypothesis. First, most people are learning and are developing cognitively for their entire lives. To get some simple data points, ask anyone who has had kids or who has been/stayed married -- these are fairly intensive ongoing learning experiences. But maybe it's different for formal learning... For simple data points on that, I encourage you to volunteer your time at a retirement community to teach basic tech to the residents. Teach them how to use apps like Facebook, FaceTime, Skype, or even Snapchat with their family members (esp. grandkids). They will LOVE it, and they will definitely learn. Of course, some will be more curious than others, and some will learn more quickly than others, but the capacity and motivation is there. I agree with your point that motivation is sometimes an issue, but there are a variety of reasons for that, and some of those reasons don't reside with the potential learner. > I feel that the answer is basically "let's fix our education system," which I -- again, perhaps overly pessimistically -- believe to be politically impossible. This is a really good point, but I think that there is a lot of potential for disruption in the education sector.
dlwdlw 9y ago
My belief is that the US freedom for curiosity is a side effect of being wealthy post WW2 relative to the other countries. The extraneous buffer allowed people to party through college and still make a living but is non-competitive when everyone else is actually learning. (at an accelerated rate due to the internet) The globalization theoretically works both ways but most Americans aren't willing to live like kings in some other country due to cultural differences, perhaps even a disdain for other cultures. Safety is also often a concern, but overblown as the US is actually very unsafe due to its gun culture. The true value of a dollar on the international scene isn't revealed as most Americans are limited in how they can use their dollar.
- madengr 9y ago
  That would be gang culture, not gun culture. If gun culture were a problem, then gun shows would be the most dangerous places.

KGIII 9y ago

I kinda disagree. It is a long story. I will skip a lot and make it as brief as I can. I used to own my own company. It has long since been sold and I am retired. We modeled traffic and I helped bring traffic modeling to the computer age. This was way back in the dark ages of the early 1990s, when you actually had to work to find people who could write good code. You also had to pay them a goodly amount of money. One of the things I offered was to help with continued education. For example, we had one lady who was a secretary and she wanted to learn to code. So, we sent her to school part time, on our dime, and she eventually found a home in QA. When we began to provision services in other areas, besides vehicular modeling for municipalities, I sent people to get the training they felt they needed. I'd even go with them, if I had time and it would benefit me. I love Defcon, and have gone even after retiring. We'd get a local university to do some research and then poach the folks who stood out - and help them complete their education. Quite a few acted on this and I have to say we benefited greatly from this. I don't have exact numbers but it was well over a third. So, in my experience, they want the education. In my experience, they can be educated. Maybe try offering to pay for it, if you're in a position to make that choice? Cover their total costs - including ensuring they can afford the time. In my case, there weren't exactly a whole lot of traffic engineers. We had to make them, and we did.

uiri 9y ago
I think that your company had to send its employees off to formal education in a classroom (or similar) setting is indicative of the problem highlighted by the person you are replying to. Your employees would not have been anywhere near as successful with some combination of textbook, lectures on video (e.g. on VHS), and a study group made up of other employees. Lifelong learning means being able to acquire new knowledge and skills outside of the traditional educational setting. Often, a University will claim that its students are not there to learn specific subjects but to learn how to learn. A lot of that learning is studying and solving problems outside of lecture time. These are the skills which are lacking because of a cultural perception that learning happens in a class.
- dv_dt 9y ago
  I think the resources of the employee are more the constraint than the manner of education - especially on the low end of the salary scale, both money but also available and/or ofsettable time. Without support of the employer, especially hourly employees would have a much more difficult time re-training.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    In our case, they were still given adequate salary. "I want to learn to..." "What do you need from me in order to...?" I've covered everything from salary to child care. By the way, the costs for salary and benefits were a fairly small percentage of overhead. A decent print room can be more expensive than even the highest paid employee.
    - dv_dt 9y ago
      That is wonderful, but I feel that employers with the wisdom to implement policies like yours have been shrinking in number. I think this is something of the consequence of making every person individually carry their own financial weight, resulting in bad public and private policies in a number of areas. But it's the pressure on businesses to extract maximized profit in their 'core competitve area' too... it leads naturally to the thought that employees should pay their own time and money for their own training. I think every suffers a little loss of efficiency in that way.

Alex3917 9y ago

> What actually makes someone a lifelong learner? Curiosity. A lot of people, maybe most, can't learn from written text, they need to someone to explain things to them in person. This tends to come off as a lack of curiosity, but often there is some underlying learning issue that people are disguising by pretending they don't care or whatever.

imh 9y ago
I've never heard that before. Do you have any sources for that?
- Alex3917 9y ago
  Looking at the results of the National Adult Literacy Survey would be a good place to start.

vikp 9y ago

I've worked across a variety of industries, from warehouses to factories to big government bureaucracies to startups. I'd argue that the problem isn't that people don't have the curiosity to become lifelong learners. Almost everyone is enthusiastic about something (most people have hobbies they spend their own time on). The problem is that their workplace (and to some extent, society) don't reward curiosity. If you're a programmer who works at startups, it's easy to think of learning as part of the job -- your tools and conditions are constantly shifting, which makes learning part of the work culture. Unfortunately, most industries don't work that way. At a warehouse, you do the same thing from the first day you start to the day you leave. It's much the same in the government and at other large bureaucracies. The problem here isn't with our educational system, it's with the modes in which we work. And to be honest, that's fine. Most people who work in industries that have static work conditions optimize for other things, like family time. It's also very hard to see outside of your silo and imagine a future where you're doing different work. Most people are optimizing their life for right now, not their theoretical career 10 years out. Unfortunately, there are fewer stable lifelong factory jobs every year. This forces people to move outside their comfort zone, which makes lifelong learning necessary. I don't have an answer to the problem, but some potential solutions are: * Reward employees for taking time outside of work to learn skills * Show people examples of others like them who have learned for motivation * Find something a person is really interested in (not because it's a "valuable skill", but just because they think it's cool), and help them take small steps to start learning it Basically, I think it's possible to help people transition to new careers further into their lives than you do. I don't think it's ever too late for someone to learn a new skill, if they have the right incentives.

csa 9y ago

> It's far from clear to me that any beyond a small percentage of people generally, but perhaps Americans in particular, have the capacity to become lifelong learners. This is very much incorrect, although I imagine that there is an abundance of anecdata that supports your hypothesis. First, most people are learning and are developing cognitively for their entire lives. To get some simple data points, ask anyone who has had kids or who has been/stayed married -- these are fairly intensive ongoing learning experiences. But maybe it's different for formal learning... For simple data points on that, I encourage you to volunteer your time at a retirement community to teach basic tech to the residents. Teach them how to use apps like Facebook, FaceTime, Skype, or even Snapchat with their family members (esp. grandkids). They will LOVE it, and they will definitely learn. Of course, some will be more curious than others, and some will learn more quickly than others, but the capacity and motivation is there. I agree with your point that motivation is sometimes an issue, but there are a variety of reasons for that, and some of those reasons don't reside with the potential learner. > I feel that the answer is basically "let's fix our education system," which I -- again, perhaps overly pessimistically -- believe to be politically impossible. This is a really good point, but I think that there is a lot of potential for disruption in the education sector.

dlwdlw 9y ago

My belief is that the US freedom for curiosity is a side effect of being wealthy post WW2 relative to the other countries. The extraneous buffer allowed people to party through college and still make a living but is non-competitive when everyone else is actually learning. (at an accelerated rate due to the internet) The globalization theoretically works both ways but most Americans aren't willing to live like kings in some other country due to cultural differences, perhaps even a disdain for other cultures. Safety is also often a concern, but overblown as the US is actually very unsafe due to its gun culture. The true value of a dollar on the international scene isn't revealed as most Americans are limited in how they can use their dollar.

madengr 9y ago
That would be gang culture, not gun culture. If gun culture were a problem, then gun shows would be the most dangerous places.