John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote
John Rumm wrote
Rod Speed wrote

And if you want them to be able to do more than just trivial documents at work, they certainly need more than you
propose with Word too.

A bit more than a couple of weeks, perhaps - but certainly not years of it.

We dont do years even with the trade schools.

Your not in the UK I take it?

Nope, Australia.

The so called "ICT" (a name which means nothing to anyone outside of education), literally can get taught for years!

Thats not JUST Word tho if
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informa...United_Kingdom
is correct.

After all, what sense does it make that kids leave school after doing the full time at school, without being able
to use something as common as Word for the sort of thing Word gets used for at work by so many ?

You mean writing one page letters, three page memos, and documents
that might use high tech capabilities like auto numbering! ;-)

Plenty of them do rather more than just that.

Has everyone had a sense of humour bypass tonight? ;-)

Nope, I was just pointing out that that overstates it.

Yes plenty do more, however a sizeable majority don't.

Thats a separate issue to what needs to be taught to them tho.

Its never practical to just teach what a sizable majority of them actually do with any subject.

As IT hack Guy Kewney used to say something like "people are in the habit of demanding tomorrow's technology today,
when in reality many would be incapable of using yesterday's technology next week!"

Thats a separate issue to what should be taught in schools tho.

Plenty of times I have worked in high tech engineering companies,
where the engineers were slogging over 2000 page cross referenced design and test specs or similar documents or crappy
geriatric PCs,

Those are all quite adequate for running something
like Word or whatever else you prefer to do that with.

while all the new decent ones were on the desks of the secretaries or middle managers punting out memos etc.

Sure, but thats again a quite separate issue to what should be taught in schools.

Plenty of places do have their engineers with the tools they need
to do their jobs and quite a few mindlessly replace their PCs every
say 3 years whether they need to be replaced or not just because
that approach has some advantages in big operations.

Bit rash to claim that no one takes years full time to teach say Word, but if anyone is that stupid they should be
shut down.

Depends on what you mean by learn word (or any other word processor.

I meant spending years teaching about nothing else, in Word specific courses.

People can use it for years and never get past the basics, because they lose any enthusiasm for learning once they
know "enough to get by".

And because they either dont do the more fancy stuff very much, or
because they dont even realise the better approaches like style sheets
are worth the trouble to understand and become fluent with etc.

That sort of thing is certainly worth teaching in schools.

Whether its worth teaching that level to everyone is a different matter entirely.

With what the Pi can do its more complicated. You can certainly
make a case for at least some school kids being able to do stuff
like that, if only to provide something that might lite the fire of
some potential engineers etc.

Certainly it makes no sense to try and ram it down the throats of
most kids tho.

Anything you stick on a school curriculum you in effect "ram down
the throats" of the kids...

Nope, particularly when quite a bit of the curriculum is optional
and not compulsory.

If you are in a state school, and ICT is on the national curriculum,
then that is what you get...

I dont believe that thats compulsory for all say hair dressers etc in
the sense that they must all fully grasp what say Word style sheets
are about, let alone some of the more sophiisticated feaures of Excel.

(although schools are finding their ways around that now)

things like the Pi just make it cheaper and at least make it possible for just about any parent to also "buy what
they use at school" should schools choose to adopt them.

Sure, but its less clear that something like the Pi
makes more sense than a netbook or a laptop.

However, I expect it being mainly taken up by the self selecting group that are already into such things.

And it remains to be seen how many kids do, either by
demanding their parents do that or driven by the parents.

But then you can also make a case for teaching quite a bit of DIY in schools too when so many chose to do stuff
like that after they have finished school too.

and in fact, some schools do. There is a local one here that
teaches building, plumbing, wiring skills etc, and even has outdoor
"pens" so that the trainees can get a feel f what it is like to
work in real world conditions for some of these tasks.

Sure, I didnt mean to imply that none do, I really just meant
that it may make more sense for most schools do to that
instead of using the Pi in schools, just because thats more
likely to be more use to more of the kids than the Pi would be.

Depends on the kids obviously. If it fires the enthusiasm for learning some "real" computer science then its
worthwhile

I'm not sure that it is if you are proposing all kids should be forced
to use it in school, even the ones that plan to be hair dressers etc.

- there are desperately few getting taught any useful development skills prior to university these days (unless self
taught)

Sure, but you can make a case that anyone who is likely to end up being
much use as a computer engineer is likely to do that seff taught stuff.

Its different with something like say jet engine design.

And then you have the other entire can of worms, whats best taught
in primary, secondardy, trade schools and university level education.

I agree with I think it was Bernard who said that the basics of using
Word should be taught to something like 8 year olds just because that
would be useful for most kids even just for projects and assignments
but not neccessarily so true of Excel which might be better left till a
bit later in school.

But I think you can make a case for teaching the sort of thing that
is useful for automating the production of quotes and for day to day
billing etc may be better left to trade school where you can teach
what is appropriate to a particular trade when say car mechanics
are likely to find that stuff less useful than say general builders etc.

Its not clear to me what the british system does with say the education
of hairdressers and plumbers about computing, whether they attempt to
force them all to do that sort of thing because a percentage of the students
will end up running their own small business in that field and so would find
that useful, or whether thats either optional units or optional courses in
the trade schools that can be taken by those who do decide to end up
owning their own small business in that field, without that being a
compulsory requirement to get the qualification to even be allowed to
actually be employed by someone else as a plumber or hairdresser.

I know the germans particularly do make all the kids do all sorts of
things formal education wise even in trade school that isnt common in
many other countrys. They've been doing that for hundreds of years now.

Not sure what they do about that with sxy computers and hairdressers tho.