[old man mode]
Be ye thankful, children. I was doomed to "master" the dreaded Claris Works. What's that children?
You don't know what Claris Works is? Oh my, children, that's because it was only for old classic and early power macintoshes, back before OSX! Oh sure, they made a pitiful windows port to windows 3.11, but it was an even GREATER abomination! No! Apple stopped making it way back then too! It's abandonware!
[/old man mode]
I agree about learning the VB functionality of excel, but then the educators would have to deal with smart alec children making a tetris clone, using Excel cells as the color blocks, and other silly things the teachers consider to be a waste of time, but actually teach kids about arrays, structs, and datatypes way more than their coursework.
As for the issues of "Derp! I canz throw teh ball! Can i makez touchdown? How I throw pass again?" trumping "You know, we REALLY need updated equipment in here that is actually configured to handle this many users safely, and not just using the default settings-- Can we secure some of the budget to get it?" (Because there *ARE* ways to make a windows install practically iron clad against student vandalism, and virus infections, but it requires actual effort on the part of the school's IT staff.)---- Think about it. Schools are seen as glorified daycare by many parents, who just want a place for their kids to be when they are both at work. That the school offers such wonderful activities as football (american) or soccer (football everywhere else), and that it makes their little sunshine FEEL GOOD about himself, because "He struggles so hard trying to do his studies" (Because he cant and wont learn to read), just makes them look the other way about the schools glaring inadequacies. Like these afore mentioned "IT" classes, which teach NOTHING about proper system maintenance, (the GRUNTWORK of IT!) teach NOTHING about modular programming, (A QBASIC class would be better! And that's saying something!), teach NOTHING about network topologies or network deployments (OSI model?! WHATS THAT!? You mean my external IP address ISNT 127.0.0.1!? It works just fine for me!? What's a SUBNET!?), and dont even gloss over how a laser printer works, despite being a major part of the most retarded IT cert you can get! (A+ cert).
No. The schools placate the parents, who bring in additional funding through the extracurricular sports programs. The schools are doing what they do, because that is where the money is. It really is that simple, and anything most schools say about scholastic excellence and academia being first priority is a flat out farce. That changes when you hit college though, because tuition is the primary source of a university's income. They want to get as many people into a classroom as possible, and that means actually teaching you something with some meat on it, and because there is no "From ON HIGH" imperative to ensure that Little Junior graduates, the university and its staff dont give two shakes about if you pass or fail or not. Only that you pay all your student fees. Comeuppance for the sports jocks and cheerleaders.
[essentially, the public school system, at least in the US anyway, is only concerned with your scholastic achievements as long as you are passing. If you demonstrate spectacular abilities, they dont have nor want to invest the resources required to actually improve your understanding, and will actually treat you in an ADVERSARIAL fashion. They only want to satisfy the government mandated requirements about their curriculum, in order to get funding. This is why they focus so much on keeping you in your seat, and on ensuring that students that couldnt write their own names with a 2inch paintbrush get diplomas, by hook or by crook, while simultaneously neglecting core scholastic infrastructures in favor of extracurricular sports equipment and facilities. It is NOT about what is best for their students. It is 100% about what is best for THEM. This is why "IT" coursework is geared toward vegetables, so that EVERYONE can pass. Newsflash, not EVERYONE is a STEM discipline innate student, which REAL IT and computer science requires. (you know, as in the S, in STEM?) This is an example of "Hook or by crook" to get everyone to pass, while giving lipservice to satisfying a curriculum. In the long run, it causes far more harm than good, because it causes people in those schools to erroneously think that they can do what real programmers and IT staff do, and causes them to respect those skills less in others, while simultaneously making the world, overall in general, a worse off place, by causing people to improperly configure things, leave doors open for blackhat threats, and just overall make managing IT environments all that much worse.]
Whew.
/rant
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Topic: I blame Dwarf Fortress for my poor typing skills (Read 5812 times)