CLEAN UP
Let me take this opportunity clean up some random notes which are cluttering my "to do" stack at this time.
I see one note that reminds me to do a page or so someday concerned with our current shortage of Tech workers. We don't have enough trained personnel to do the work that is available and we have imported about 150,000 from other areas to fill existing jobs. By “other areas” foreign locations are intended. Some leaders of the technical fields say we could use another 150,000 right now and they are urging Congress to set forth legislation permitting them to bring in that many addition foreign workers to fill jobs which are going begging. The alternative, they point out, is to actually ship the work itself overseas and do an offshore operation entirely eliminating such work areas here in the United States.
This process, it strikes me, is already well underway and will continue until our educational system is refurbished and brought to a point where we can educate our young people to do such work. At the present time we simply do not teach such skills. Those who do so learn it all on their own or in some industry related situations where business defrays the costs involved. More young people are learning to work in "on the job training"" situations than ever before, but this is a costly way for industry and commerce to handle it and to bear the burden which should not concern them - that of training young people to work.
Also, tying in closely with that note, is one which says that I should write something about the rising costs of a college education. Harvard is around $35,000 per year. Is it worth that much? I rather doubt it. Increases are noticed at all levels. You can see them all the way down to ,and including, our community colleges and trade schools.
I notice, too, that in some current resume forms allow very little if any attention to be paid to a listing college credits and degrees. More space is being devoted to practical experience the individual may have had along the lines required by the job being considered.
In another note I told myself to do piece about the importance of young boys and girls learning HTML. It is, I'm told, not all that difficult, and that if properly presented it could change the future livelihood prospect of hosts of high school boys and girls.
A basic amount of skill in handling "Hypertext machine language" could do a lot toward solving the first item I listed above - educating technical workers for today's job market. Young people must learn to actually use the computer for other than playing games and engaging in chat room relationships.
We need some radical changes in our schools. Basic changes are needed - not just cosmetic modifications. By this time our colleges should be churning out skill technical works of all types.
Who dropped the ball and how long ago? I don't think our "educators", so called, ever had possession of it to start with.
A.L.M. June 9, 2003 [c500wds]
