A few years ago, the leaders of the College Board, the folks who administer the SAT college entrance exam, asked themselves a radical question: Of all the skills and knowledge that we test young people for that we know are correlated with success in college and in life, which is the most important? Their answer: the ability to master “two codes” — computer science and the U.S. Constitution.I have nothing against either branch of knowledge, but: ugh - that's it? Contemplating an adult existence in which the yardsticks of success are familiarity with computers and basic civics, I am beset by a host of d adjectives: disappointing, dreary, dismal, depressing. I am more of a music, drama and fiction maven myself.
Friedman doesn't define "success", but as he describes it, it seems to me something along the lines of, "the ability to change the world". Perhaps that's an inspiring thought; at the moment, I find it a bit terrifying.
I will go so far as to predict that knowledge of computer science and the US Constitution will not be the keys to adult happiness.
Against the College Board's best advice, I'll continue to advocate for critical thinking; emotional intelligence; self-discipline; monogamy; the Golden Rule; discerning and pursuing a vocation; an orientation toward serving others; physical and mental health; immersion in the best of human thought and art; numeric, scientific and medical literacy; and, dare I say, getting to know Jesus.
I can see where knowledge of computers and the constitution are important, but it does seem a bit reductionist to see them as the foundations of adult success. Computers, at least, are such a moving target. That is something where you can learn "enough", even if you never become an expert. I never had any formal training in computers. But I learned enough to operate the analytical instruments I used at work, and to compose reports in Canvas, which was the software our boss chose as being most applicable. If I got into issues that I couldn't solve myself, that's what manufacturer tech support is for.
ReplyDeleteAs for the constitution, it seems like they are advocating for more than basic civics. The article spoke of 19 court cases as being required reading. Maybe we shouldn't brush over basic civics so quickly. We have someone in the White House who doesn't appear to have a working knowledge of that.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI've always suspected the College Board of creating a religion and masking it as science. The religion is Test Scores. What do we test? Things we can score. Amen.
ReplyDeleteSo why not lacrosse rules and clarinet fingering.
It would have been helpful if the College Board had told us, how they measured success.
ReplyDeleteI presume it is something like health, wealth, and/or happiness. Perhaps even an indicator of generosity such as willingness to donate time, talent and money to benefit others.
In the research that Putnam and Campbell did for American Grace , they found that frequent church attendance produced increases in health, wealth and generosity, if and only if the frequent church attenders had religious networks composed of family, close friends, and small groups.
The effects on health, happiness, and generosity were about the same as an increase of $100,000 in annual income i.e. going from being poor to being relatively rich.
If the College Board just measured money, then people might well be advised to create for themselves a religious network and attend church regularly. That might be a whole lot easier than mastering computers and government, and using them to get a $100,000 increase in annual salary.
I have always been very skeptical about all these tests even though personally I have always done very well on them.
Their two new tests might be an improvement. They seem to be advocating more understanding of how to use computers, and government rather than just pure knowledge. But they still do not seem to be concerned with the wisdom of the why ? and what for? of both computers and government.
Yes, excellent points, Jack.
DeleteMaybe it was outside the scope of the article, but nothing was said about basic survival skills. Unless you're so rich you can hire everything done for you, it's hard to see how you could be very happy or successful without being able to prepare a decent meal, do minor plumbing repairs, simple carpentry, etc. Of course that won't do anything for your SAT score.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of SATs and the like, this Jesuit university has announced that it will stop requiring standardized test scores for most applicants.
DeleteI never thought much about "success" when I was in my youth and thinking about my future. By high school, I pretty much knew I'd be majoring in physics in college. Beyond that, I figured I would always be fed, have a roof over my head and have some financial wiggle room. But lots of money, no. Fun, yes. And my career was half bureaucratic boredom and half engineering fun. So, not too bad. I know Basic and used to know Pascal. I'd like to learn Python if I ever manage to get some motion back in my life.
ReplyDeleteEven though I spent 8 years after college working as a programmer/analyst before completing my grad degree in Economics, I would not have kids focus on "coding'. Not even sure what they mean by that. Certainly the coding I learned in the dinosaur age of computers (Assembly Language Code (ALC), COBOL, and FORTRAN - using ALC about 90% of the time) would have been no use to me even a few years after I left the field. The systems and software change way too fast. I do think everyone who plans to work in a desk-based job should know the OFFICE suite. Everyone else, including those who are working with sophisticated factory tools and never sit in a desk, can teach themselves or take a dedicated course to learn the task specialized software they need to use for work, as Katherine and I and millions of others have done.
ReplyDeleteThe requirement to know something about the Constitution might be good - maybe send Trump back to high school for this?
Anne, I agree with everything you've said here, except that around here it is not high schoolers but seventh graders who are required to pass a Constitution test.
DeleteI truly don't know what Friedman meant by his requirement that students be able to "code" computers (maybe it's a sign that his own technology literacy isn't especially high?). When I was in college, Computer Science was basically a field in applied mathematics. There are quite a few people who major in it, or did in my day, but my observation of them is that they are not the ones who are running the world. The masters of technology who truly are shaping the world, istm, are those who have tamed social media and are moving the needle on social issues and/or are monetizing it. (I am guessing that that sort of thing is what Friedman and the College Board have in mind when they talk about success.)
I believe the conventional view of who the successful adults are, would be the billionaire entrepreneurs: Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, those guys who started Google, et al. I'd think that a good argument could be made that their success lies, not in the fact that they're ridiculously wealthy (although that surely is how a large percentage of the world would define success), but rather that they created technology platforms that allows us to work, communicate and collaborate in new ways.
ReplyDeleteThe creation of the technology platforms involves solid state physics, optoelectronics, microfabrication, done by a lot of hard working smart people. The billionaires recognized an opportunity created by these technologies and they surf the wave well. But "creation" was mostly done by people you rarely hear of. Maybe racist Schockley, coinventor of the transistor, but mostly heard of for his racism.
DeleteFunny you should mention Dr. Shockley because I was just thinking of him. Jim mentioned that when he was in college, computer science was part of applied mathematics. I was thinking that when I was in college the transistor had just been invented. In fact I borrowed one from an engineer for a photo for the student newspaper when Shockley came for a talk to illustrate what he was talking about.
DeleteIsn't Dr. Shockley a good example of someone with a "skills education" instead of a "soul education"?
DeleteYeah. Schockley's the poster child. The guy I like is Ernst Abbe. Scientist and pro-working slob. I'm sure he had his blind spots too.
DeleteJean, You could say that. But he wasn't the only smart guy to fall for IQ testing as measures of anything but how someone does on an IQ test. Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein marched up that same hill to embarrassment a few decades later, and they had "soul education."
DeleteI had to look up those guys, Tom, inventors of the Bell Curve Theory. Yes, proving things via flawed data.
DeleteI sort of like the idea of different types of "intelligence," but I'm not sure you can quantify and measure that stuff, and I think it's odd to call it intelligence.
I guess the Myers-Briggs test tried to get at temperament and talent, but I don't have a lot of faith in it. A boss made us all take it at a departmental retreat. It pigeon-holed some of us, and she used the info when doling out promotions and workload.
From a book review of "Educated" in latest issue.of C'weal:
ReplyDelete"For the ancient Greeks, education implied much more than our modern conception of gaining experience and receiving information. It meant entering into the patterns of the larger community."
Standardized tests can only measure skills and the receipt of facts.
They cannot measure HOW you have internalized what you have learned in a way that will make you a credit to the human race.
How much joy do you bring to others? How much wisdom do you offer your community? How do you contribute to fair wages and treatment? how do you clean up your own messes, emotional and physical? How well do you work with others to solve problems by compromise?
Can't test that stuff.
Thanks for pointing out that review in Commonweal, Jean. I had missed it. "Educated" was the subject of our last book club meeting. One thing that impressed me was the amount of fact-checking the publisher did, verifying that this maverick fundamentalist cult actually existed , that the people and the herbal business were real, and that the father really did run a junkyard. I know there have been instances "fake memoirs".
DeleteI still am amazed at Tara's accomplishment. It is worth noting that there were people who had her back, notably one of her brothers, her grandparents, her employers in the town, and her professors in college.
I heard her on the radio.
DeleteI am off dysfunctional family memoirs because they merely confirm my view that the human race is full of horrid people torturing their kids.
The review seemed to indicate some themes of spiritual uplift, but I sensed the reviewer was more interested in showing off his knowledge of classical Greek culture than in Westover's story. I'm not sure Ivory Tower dwellers really can understand this type of story on any visceral level.
What did you think of the book?
Yeah, I didn't think the classical Greek stuff had anything to do with the story.
DeleteAbout the book, I was interested enough to finish it. Everybody at the book club was dishing about how awful and crazy the parents were. Which I agreed with. I understand Tara is now living in London. An ocean between her and her crazy family seems about right.
I am off dysfunctional family memoirs now, too. I just finished one, "Freckled" by Toby Neal. This one was about having stoner hippy parents in the "70s, in Hawaii. Which was a lot grimmer than you might imagine. And I'm done for awhile.
The take-away lesson for me was the peripheral people who cared about these kids, and made a difference for them. We need to take every opportunity to offer an encouraging word or a listening ear to someone; we never know when we might be the only ones to do so.