There May Yet Be Hope

March 2009
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There May Yet Be Hope

16 March 2009

George Rebane

… and what skills will you have to offer for which someone will voluntarily pay?

Young people today are beginning to wake up to the benefits of learning high-tech skills no matter what their career plans may be. This discovery has been made through a survey sponsored by IBM and reported on here. The basic idea is that if you emerge tech-savvy from school, the world is open to you.

Many of us techies experienced this in our careers that started decades ago and tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to motivate our kids and friends to consider it, especially if they were still undecided on their life’s work when it came time to make pro-tech vs tech-free course choices. In the aggregate, they and our country have paid a price for kids proudly adopting the ‘I don’t do math’ attitude. In the interval many notable people and good writers have tried to inform young people that high-tech skills not only let you choose rewarding careers but, more fundamentally, give you thinking tools that are useful over the broad landscape of human life. With such a background, you can think thoughts that others without it cannot even imagine.

Now there may be a sea change coming, and perhaps the current recession is yielding up a blessing for us all as the next generation faces up to the realities of job markets in a pre-Singularity world. Mark Hanny, VP of IBM’s Academic Initiative, as reported in NetworkWorld –

Hanny explains many companies today want "T-shaped employees," meaning those with a broad knowledge base that can be applied across the business, but also a deep understanding of their specific field, such as engineering or nursing. Such demands in the workforce partly drive universities to offer interdisciplinary courses among engineering, computer science and business schools, for instance. "The key takeaway for IBM and our Academic Initiative is that now saying you have IT skills doesn't mean you are locked up in the data center or stuck in a server room. IT is being embraced by students as a core competency across many professions and no longer considered a narrow, specialized skill set."

For me and my peers it was an exhilarating experience to be qualified and wanted for what seemed to be a limitless host of jobs and careers as we graduated with our technical degrees (mine was in physics). After we started work, most of us went back to grad school for more degrees, not only because it was profitable, but for the excitement of the new universes it opened for us. Now after decades of our capable young getting educations in the humanities, law, and politically correct majors destined only for government jobs, today for some the pendulum may be swinging back so that Americans may continue to compete in world markets.

For more clarification on this message, please see John Henry, the Steel Drivin' Man.

Posted in Culture Comments, Our Country

3 responses to “There May Yet Be Hope”

Russ Steele

16 March 2009

George,
Because their dad was interested in computers and build his first computer with blinking lights and then one that could write programs in Basic, then eventually do simple word processing, our four daughters grew up with a computer in the house. Shortly after we returned to California, our #3 daughter was registered at the Lyman Gilmore Middle School, where they had Commodore 64 computers which the boys dominated. That is until #3 changed the password, which she gave out to her girl friends. The boys were beside themselves, a girl had take control of “their computers.” When the girls went off to college, the first three went with a home build desk top computers, however #4 sold her horse and bought a Mac, and scanner. Her high school graduation gift was a dot-matrix printer. She uses computers like you and I drive a car, without thinking about what to do next, it is an intuitive skill born of familiarity. After grad school in Writing and Publishing #4 had several book publishing jobs as a graphic designer, but her computers skills soon dominated and she was recruited by the IT department at the publishing house. Here degrees are in English, and Writing and Publishing, not engineering or computer science. Everyone of our four girls can point to opportunities that opened up to them because they had developed computer skills before entering the job market. Having some computer skills in a networked world is a highly value added skill to have regardless of the occupation.

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George Rebane

16 March 2009

Agreed. We can tell a similar story with our kids. It appears though that the IBM Academic Initiative resource center and their recent survey refer to a deeper level of tech-savvy than being ‘computer literate’ in the sense of using it as the indispensible home/office productivity tool that it is.

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DaveC

20 March 2009

I had an “I don’t do math” attitude as well in high school. I took algebra in my first or second year and managed to squeak by with a ‘C’, but I didn’t really get it. I was just glad I satisfied a graduation requirement
In my junior year an experimental elective class called Applied Engineering was offered, so I signed up for the one semester class. Something about that class stirred my curiosity. I don’t know if it was figuring out how to build a cantelever span, the force of dirt behind a retaining wall or pressures in a vessel, but something clicked. It was like a light bulb going from dim to bright. Suddenly I had a keen interest in mathematics and I actually got it. Perhaps it was seeing and understanding the physical aspects of how mathematics fits in to engineering design and concept. I am not from Missouri, but the term “Show Me” is what finally got me to understand complex mathematics. I might add, a little textbook entitled (Industrial Series) Mathematics, by John W. Breneman, Penn State also helped put it all in perspective. I still have that book and frequently refer to it for trig tables and to refresh my memory.

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