Graduates in computer science are so inarticulate as to be unemployable. So says a consortium of prospective employers. The Higher Education Statistics Agency agrees. This week it put computing top for unemployability, along with maths, engineering and media studies. Students should switch from geek to chic.
Not a week passes without business complaining about the education system. In March the CBI demanded a crash course for women engineers. In April the British Chambers of Commerce said schools had 'lost the vocational plot '. This week the Prince's Trust reported half of businesses gave 'skill inadequacies' as the chief curb on economic growth. Is there evidence for this, or is it what business always says?
Few experiences can be more detached from life than sitting silent in a classroom. The concept of 'subjects', like the methods of teaching and testing them, are little changed from a century ago. So, too, is the claim that those of strictly specialist use - maths or, previously, Latin - are to 'train the mind'. Learning chunks of the Qur'an also trains the mind. But then Britain's exam-obsessed schools can make a madrasa seem a liberal education.
The former education secretary Michael Gove's job commitment was impressive. But his desire to take schools back to Victorian rote learning, traditional content and formal testing was archaic. It lacked any evidence base and appeared no more than a political comfort blanket. I regard today's education as roughly where medicine was in the days of bleeding, cupping and purging. It awaits some massive intellectual breakthrough. Gove reminded me of the great American physician, Benjamin Rush, who bled American presidents to their deaths. His contemporaries never challenged him, for bleeding was 'good enough for our forefathers'.
The nurture of a child's mind remains a mystery. Hence the yearning of its serious practitioners to fashion it as a quantifiable science. The monastic church, long the custodian of education, fell back on rote and textual memory. It was easy to test. All forms of educational progressivism have terrified authoritarians, from Chinese communists to Muslim states, and to Britain's own education department.
In the 50s and 60s the best and most widespread science education was in Soviet Russia. It got Russia first into space, but led on to social and political collapse. Meanwhile, the worst league-table performer in maths and science teaching was (and still is) the US. This paradox is inconvenient for the maths lobby, and so is ignored. Perish the thought that maths and science makes no difference to economic or any other performance.
One of the few pundits to call the lobby's bluff is the British past president of the American Mathematical Association, Keith Devlin. Advocating that America reduce emphasis on classroom maths, if only to reduce 'math phobia', he noted: 'There is something vaguely comical about the nation that leads the world in science and technology, and virtually dominates the world in the development of computer hardware and software, constantly lamenting the poor maths skills of its population.'
There is something equally bizarre in British ministers drooling over China's dirigiste schools, as did Elizabeth Truss recently. They are hardly beacons of a liberal society. Since the days of Margaret Thatcher, the education system has shown a Soviet fixation with churning out more mathematicians and scientists, suborning even the BBC to shower them with celebrity. Yet Hesa figures persistently show science, maths and engineering graduates finding fewer jobs than historians, lawyers and educators. The market may ask for more science graduates, but it deplores their quality and fails to employ them. I remember one pharmaceutical firm complaining it had to retrain its chemistry recruits from the start. It preferred entrants with skills of imagination, articulacy and team work.
Twenty years ago ministers went potty about computer education. Billions were spent on it. We learned today from Ofcom that six-year-olds are more computer literate than grown-ups. They may need topping up with coding and security, but essentially they teach themselves. So why not spend school time helping them with what appears to be holding them back in the jobs market - and in life in general?
Having sat on innumerable interview panels, I groan as applicants with sound paper qualifications are painfully unable to present themselves in a group, speak well, write clearly, or show simple manners and charm. George Osborne may depict the only 'real economy' as being manufacturing, but the days when you got a job by twisting a widget are over.
Two-thirds of new jobs are in services, notably the much-derided 'hospitality sector'. They are about dealing with people. What help is a lonely exam paper or coding on a tablet in that? Indeed, what could be more important to young people than learning to live at peace with themselves and others? We have it all wrong. But try telling a British school that etiquette is more use than algebra.
Entities 0 Name: Britain Count: 2 1 Name: American Count: 2 2 Name: American Mathematical Association Count: 1 3 Name: Benjamin Rush Count: 1 4 Name: China Count: 1 5 Name: British Chambers of Commerce Count: 1 6 Name: CBI Count: 1 7 Name: BBC Count: 1 8 Name: US Count: 1 9 Name: Russia Count: 1 10 Name: Soviet Russia Count: 1 11 Name: Ofcom Count: 1 12 Name: Michael Gove Count: 1 13 Name: George Osborne Count: 1 14 Name: Prince 's Trust Count: 1 15 Name: Margaret Thatcher Count: 1 16 Name: Elizabeth Truss Count: 1 17 Name: America Count: 1 18 Name: Keith Devlin Count: 1 19 Name: Higher Education Statistics Agency Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1lA9uuv Title: The case for starting statistics education in kindergarten Description: The US appears focused on math education, especially when it comes to curing American innumeracy. Yet we are in an age when enormous new data sources are now available in academia, business, and government. Elliot Schrage, vice president of communications at Facebook, argued that our kids should study "statistics, because the ability to understand data...
Post a Comment for "Why computer science graduates can't talk themselves into jobs"