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Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

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Re: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

#191

Post by wwweston »

snowwrestler wrote: post #31
onion2k wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a greater focus on apprentices and in-work training though? It's not like people leave school at 16 and stop learning, surely?

Yes; German workers in some industries are arguably more educated than their American counterparts because of the training and continuing education programs in their workplaces.

Sounds like an undue burden on German businesses; how can we expect the private sector to thrive when businesses might be bearing their own training costs instead of shrugging them off to labor and a public education system?

Re: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

#192

Post by pfisch »

vkou wrote: post #170
pfisch wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about job creators? Some people are going to create new business opportunities through education, and then they will hire more educated people to help them. It seems like you have experienced education from a bunch of non-entrepreneurial sides. Not everyone is an employee.

When are these educated job creators going to create jobs in the Rust Belt? The people living there have been waiting for that for decades, now. Giving all of them PHDs in chemistry and medicine won't do a damned thing. Only a few industries in the US are actually short on qualified people - and they can't absorb 20 million retrained people.

If more people knew how to program wages for programmers would drop and you could hire more of them. I wouldn't mind having 2-3 more programmers right now.

Even if you're right that no new businesses would be created by educating people which is ridiculous, we would employ more people because they would be cheaper.

Also if wages drop for a career it is less risky to start your own business because the potential wages lost are reduced.

I mean, just about every industry is short on qualified people as their salary approaches $0.

Re: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

#193

Post by kijin »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #124
kijin wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One might say that there is a point of diminishing returns, and the U.S. has reached it while many developing countries haven't. Exactly where that point is, seems to be a function of how many highly educated people a country can produce vs. how many jobs it can create. 100K new doctors and engineers, with 100K new jobs for them? Wonderful! But what if you only had 20K new jobs? Now you're in trouble. Instead of trea…

>One might say that there is a point of diminishing returns, and the U.S. has reached it while many developing countries haven't. I'm skeptical, given that the population-wide baseline of knowledge in the USA isn't actually that high. When the subject comes up, we hear that other countries teach their high-school kids calculus, linear algebra, and real physics.

You're only looking at one of the variables (the number and/or proportion of highly educated people). If the other variable (the number and/or proportion of well-paying jobs) is abnormally low, the first variable can be quite low and still produce the same effect. It's the ratio that matters, not absolute numbers.

Re: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

#194

Post by Teckla »

nekopa wrote: post #99
Kurtz79 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please give some example how knowledge of programming would help a truck driver, a cook or a welder to be more efficient in their jobs.

I'll give it a try: Truck driver: Knowledge of the travelling salesman problem. Algorithms in general to find optimal routes. A little programming knowledge to help with automating their excel sheets to record expenses. Cook: OOP as it is applied to a kitchen and its staff: are there more efficient ways to divide roles and responsibilities between different jobs in the kitchen, or are the defined roles (line cook, so…

Truck driver: Knowledge of the travelling salesman problem. Algorithms in general to find optimal routes. A little programming knowledge to help with automating their excel sheets to record expenses.

The companies for which truckers work already have people and computers and software to route them from delivery to delivery and from pick-up to pick-up efficiently. The trucker himself or herself wouldn't benefit one bit from familiarity with the Traveling Salesman Problem or from rudimentary computer programming experience.

In addition, recording expenses via some overly complex solution such as a computer spreadsheet is ridiculous. It's much more efficient for them to write down their expenses with paper and pen and submit their receipts. It takes literally seconds.

I won't comment on your other examples, but they look equally weak.

That being said, a rudimentary class or two in grade school/junior high/high school seems like a good idea so that people with a natural aptitude for programming and who derive enjoyment from it can discover that fact.

Source: Father was a truck driver.

Re: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

#195

Post by Teckla »

dagw wrote: post #90
Kurtz79 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please give some example how knowledge of programming would help a truck driver, a cook or a welder to be more efficient in their jobs.

Honestly not really sure, having never worked in any of those jobs and have no idea what those jobs will look like 20 years from now. However let me speculate: Many people believe that truck drivers will be become more and more replaced with autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles. Understanding the underlying software will no doubt make it easier to be in charge of a software controlled semi-autonomous truck convoy.…

I truly believe that if someone with experience and domain knowledge also knows how to do some simple programming they'll be able to see all kinds of tiny improvements and automatstation they can implement.

And without extensive training and experience in software development they'll automate those things very, very badly, and likely with a lot of bugs. And if those things grow out of control, the mountain of technical debt will be terrifying. If lives are in the balance in any way, it could be a disaster.

Just like someone without carpentry training or experience is likely to create very low quality kitchen cabinets which may even be unsafe.

Re: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty (2015)

#196

Post by LordKano »

jhbadger wrote: post #96
LordKano wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate the idea that some people seem to hold that teaching everyone to code will fix the world's problems. It won't. People who want to code, should learn to code. Some people should learn to weld. Some people should learn to drive a commercial truck. Some people should learn to cook. Some people should learn to landscape. Some people should learn to fix automobiles and son on and so forth. We have a society that ne…

I'm old enough that I was taught BASIC in middle-school circa 1981. Back then, it was taken for granted that "computer literacy" involved teaching people to code. Am I a "professional programmer" today? Well, I do program as part of my job, but I'm technically a microbiologist/immunologist. Analyzing data by writing code is a lot more efficient and repeatable than the fiddling with spreadsheets that non-coders do.

I was taught basic in middle-school in 1983. At my school, this was only done for children in the Gifted Program.

I am an IT Professional. I have worked as a developer and two years ago, I made the leap to security analyst. My programming skills come into play because some of the security packages I have used require the ability to write regexes.

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