[geeks] geeks Digest, Vol 86, Issue 11

[Jonathan Patschke]

On Wed, 20 Jan 2010, Phil Stracchino wrote:

> I think what you would have to do is set a few minimum standards to
> require

It's fine to hand-wave about requirements, but the question you ought to
ask yourself is "How do we deal with people who don't meet those
requirements?"  Fine their parents?  Imprison them?  Kidnap the child and
force him to learn?

Whose rights are being defended?  Whose are being infringed-upon?

Until those basic questions are answered, you're just changing the
window-dressing by saying "We'll force you to pay us to abduct your kid,
but we'll only teach them a few subjects poorly instead of a lot of them."

How well do businesses perform when they don't have any real competition?
Witness what crap Microsoft released when they were assured a per-system
license fee for any OEM-built x86 system versus what they're putting out
now when Apple is a viable competitor.  That's our school system.  Sure,
you can put your kids in private school, but you still have to pay for the
public school system.  Nothing they do--no matter how inefficient, no
matter how wrong--will cause them to lose funding as a result.

> a stipulated level of competency in the basic reading, writing,
> math set (up to at least linear algebra)

Here's a datapoint for you: last week was the first time I ever needed
linear algebra in the real world.  You'd require every person to know[0]
that?  I'm sure a machinist could come up with a completely different set
of things that everyone should know.  So would an author.  So would a
musician.  So would a bookkeeper.

When you get into requirements, you leave yourself open to "one" really
important thing that was left out, then another and another.  As different
people rotate through seats of power, you eventually wind up with
something approaching to a union of all those requirements--where no one
subject gets as thorough a treating as it ought.


[0] I did appreciate the opportunity to refresh myself with the concepts,
     and I think it will, overall, make me more efficient, but I really did
     get by just fine without having used it (or even being able to
     remember most of it).
-- 
Jonathan Patschke  ) "Science is what we understand well enough to explain
Elgin, TX         (   to a computer.  Art is everything else we do."
USA                )                                    --Dr. Donald Knuth