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In a reply elsewhere here, I said "people do need to suck it up and learn new skills." How many people know how to learn new skills, or are able to recognize q

In a reply elsewhere here, I said "people do need to suck it up and learn new skills." How many people know how to learn new skills, or are able to recognize quickly that they need to do so? Is that a missing element in our education? You spend 12 years drinking what they're selling, and then suddenly you're expected to know how to re-tool yourself. Shouldn't education be structured in part to teach and reinforce self re-tooling, and even grade on that ability?

samlevine 15y ago
> Is that a missing element in our education? The missing element may be learning itself. If you don't come out of college with an ability to learn new things on your own or with the help of others you may have missed the point. I've spent a significant amount of my adult life teaching people how to use Microsoft Office products (i.e. I've done tech support in some fashion or another for a while now). Some of them have been seasoned office workers, others have been older folks and still others bright young people that know how to pilot a browser but are confused by a 2 paragraph e-mail (with pictures) on how to connect to the corporate network via VPN. Almost no one I've ever supported wants to know how to do something differently. Everyone is mad that things are changing and the thing that they've done for several months, years or decades, no longer works for some inscrutable reason. The time they've spent learning is real and the changes they see seem arbitrary at best and frequently counterproductive. I've supported people that were fine with e-mail, but thought that wikis weren't a good use of people's time. Others can figure out how to google things and look through forums, but most have difficulty sorting noise from useful information. I've supported people with PHDs that are incapable of reading any error messages because they have been trained not to read them by crappy software. We have so many, many tools available to us today and we're not using them in many businesses, even when they've already been purchased. And even more businesses are still using paper and duplicating effort into multiple spreadsheets (and using Excel as a CRM, etc).
- sixtofour 15y ago
  "The missing element may be learning itself. If you don't come out of college with an ability to learn new things on your own or with the help of others you may have missed the point." Fair point, but I was focused more on K12, particularly if the idea that more people should go to votech and less to college catches on.

samlevine 15y ago

> Is that a missing element in our education? The missing element may be learning itself. If you don't come out of college with an ability to learn new things on your own or with the help of others you may have missed the point. I've spent a significant amount of my adult life teaching people how to use Microsoft Office products (i.e. I've done tech support in some fashion or another for a while now). Some of them have been seasoned office workers, others have been older folks and still others bright young people that know how to pilot a browser but are confused by a 2 paragraph e-mail (with pictures) on how to connect to the corporate network via VPN. Almost no one I've ever supported wants to know how to do something differently. Everyone is mad that things are changing and the thing that they've done for several months, years or decades, no longer works for some inscrutable reason. The time they've spent learning is real and the changes they see seem arbitrary at best and frequently counterproductive. I've supported people that were fine with e-mail, but thought that wikis weren't a good use of people's time. Others can figure out how to google things and look through forums, but most have difficulty sorting noise from useful information. I've supported people with PHDs that are incapable of reading any error messages because they have been trained not to read them by crappy software. We have so many, many tools available to us today and we're not using them in many businesses, even when they've already been purchased. And even more businesses are still using paper and duplicating effort into multiple spreadsheets (and using Excel as a CRM, etc).

sixtofour 15y ago
"The missing element may be learning itself. If you don't come out of college with an ability to learn new things on your own or with the help of others you may have missed the point." Fair point, but I was focused more on K12, particularly if the idea that more people should go to votech and less to college catches on.