Eric says UK education system is holding it back in IT

"If I may be so impolite, your track record isn't great."

[Leosghost]

Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it's made. That is just throwing away your great computing heritage," he said.

[bbc.co.uk...]

Eric also said.. in passing..

He also reassured television bosses over copyright violations, saying Google could take down sites from its search system within four hours if there were problems.

Apparently that latter part doesn't always apply to "blogger" though.. :(( when sites on it are using other peoples scraped content..

[graeme_p]

Just what I always said.

I argued over this with the principal of a school here that follows the British curriculum, and the answer was "well that is what is in the syllabus" - i.e. useless junk.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

More ...
[scotsman.com...]

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Just what I always said.

Do you really, honestly believe that Schmidt the Schmuck is the best person to direct UK education Policy?

Have you read some of the stuff he has uttered in the past? The man is a numpty.

[graeme_p]

No one said he should direct UK education policy, just that he is completely right on this issue.

Do you really think it is useful, or even a meaningful part of education, to teach kids how to use a word processor or Powerpoint?

If you teach them the principles, they can learn particular apps as and when they need them. Teach them the apps and they cannot do anything else, and will probably be lost every time the UI changes.

Schools should educate, not take time away from education for vocational training which can be done as and when people need those particular narrow skills.

[J_RaD]

Schools should educate, not take time away from education for vocational training which can be done as and when people need those particular narrow skills.

I disagree 100%

[graeme_p]

So schools should teach narrow skills that will probably be outdated by the time the kids start work, at the expense of teaching them how to think and understand?

That is not education. You are advocating replacing education with vocational training.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

If you teach them the principles, they can learn particular apps as and when they need them. Teach them the apps and they cannot do anything else, and will probably be lost every time the UI changes.

I do agree with this.