OT: Recession Coming?

[Andrew Gabriel]

We had that in my 6th form. Not all the weekly sessions were career related, but many were.

[tim.....]

Though realistically that is never going to be possible.

"Real" companies (and I'm talking generally, not just in broadcast) like to make use of the state of the art equipment available

Universities are never going to be able to continually replace their stuff each time something new comes along and just muddle through teaching the generic stuff on "last year's" model

tim

[tim.....]

Whether to stream or not, isn't mandated by government. That decision is made lower down in the food chain

tim

[dennis]

Voice recognition and synthesis.

[dennis]

If you meant the one about "give a computer scientist a problem to solve and you will get a new language" it isn't a joke.

[78lp]

Trouble is with little kids its just as likely to be one of the most recent ones they have heard that is what they will say if asked and that?s a lousy basis for deciding what to teach them for the bulk of their time in school.

And the other problem is that they will have no idea about the future prospects for the job too. With that classic engine driver thing that quite a few kids used to decide they wanted to be, the problem is that if we end up with automated trains, we wont need many engine drivers anymore so its pointless the schools teaching those who say they want to be an engine driver what an engine driver needs.

And you can easily end up with the sort of result Pete the parrot enslaver has ended up with when he chose to get educated in what he is interested in and then discovers that hardly anyone wants to employ people with an education in that area.

[harry]

I could read at four years old. My mother used to sit with me reading the Beano.

At school whacking helped. I was in a class of fifty. I remember there was one awkward bugger who just looked perpetually dazed. The solution was for other pupils to teach him. Again and again and again. At first it was OK (being like the teacher) Eventually everyone got pissed off with him. They took him round the back of the toilets and beat him up. He was told he'd better improve or there'd be more of the same. It worked!

[Mike Lander]

You still need to be able to read and write to be able to SMS.

[Tim Streater]

No I mean the one about the king who wants a new toaster designed which will toast more consistently. The engineer proposes a 4-bit processor with a scanner to check the brownness of the toast and a simple knob to set the desired level.

The computer scientist sees this as shortsighted and proposes a 386 processor with 16Meg RAM and a 30Meg HD (this was the 1980s). The software will be written in a new object-oriented language with class-inheritance [1], and as toasting is a sub-class of cooking, the main program can just consist of the simple statement "cook yourself".

The King has the computer scientist thrown in the moat and gives his daughter's hand in marriage to the engineer.

[1] or whatever the f*ck it's called. Fortunately I was able to avoid all that shit during my working life, so my rendering of the above anecdote is only approximate. I'm sure someone will be along soon with a proper reference.

[The Natural Philosopher]

If only they still made kings like that.

[Brian Reay]

A very perceptive post.

Research has shown that children who are exposed to reading at home tend to progress far more quickly than those who are not. The exposure can be as simple as seeing their parents read although, ideally, would include things like having stories read to them and being taught some basic skills.

Interestingly, when it comes to numeracy, we have a lot of adults with poor skills. These are the product of the 70s and 80s, by the 90s the National Curriculum pretty well enforced a return to the traditional teaching of 'tables' and mental mathematics which we so often hear are to be 'introduced'. In fact, they have been required for over 20 years.

The problem is, neither the media or politicians let facts get in the way of a story.

[Mark]

hi wil u b gong 2 pb tnght

ys cu abot 7

[Julian Barnes]

Agreed. And hanging and flogging for paedophiles and traitors.

[Richard]

Can we do flogging and hanging? No point flogging a dead 'un.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I doubt the Tory party would agree with that...

[Richard]

Don't see why not.

[Julian Barnes]

Maybe that's cos they're all faux Tories/closet Marxists nowadays.

[bert]

In article , harry writes

SO why are employers always moaning about literacy and numeracy (lack of) in school leavers?

[bert]

No wonder the class sizes are so large.

[Huge]

Because employers want people educated enough to do the job without being so educated that they realise they are being shafted.