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United States Education

America Failing To Prepare Gen Z To Enter the Workforce Due To 'Glaring' Gap in Tech Skills (fortune.com) 264

Computer classes for Gen Z aren't cutting it anymore. From a report: More than a third (37%) of Gen Zers feel their school education didn't prepare them with the digital skills they need to propel their career, according to Dell Technologies' international survey of more than 15,000 adults ages 18 to 26 across 15 countries. A majority (56%) of this generation added that they had very basic to no digital skills education. It's all led to some warranted skepticism regarding the future of work: Many Gen Zers are unsure what the digital economy will look like, and 33% have little to no confidence that the government's investments in a digital future will be successful in 10 years. Forty-four percent think that schools and businesses should work together to address the digital skills gap. The findings back up past research that found nearly half of the Class of 2022 felt the top skill they were underprepared for was technical skills.
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America Failing To Prepare Gen Z To Enter the Workforce Due To 'Glaring' Gap in Tech Skills

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  • by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @02:05PM (#63260299)

    You know what they taught me at school? Excel and Word. That's it. If you really want to excel at something, you have to commit copious amounts of your own time to it instead of relying on the school system with 1-2 hours of IT classes a week.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by GregMmm ( 5115215 )

      I agree 100%. Besides, by the time they would graduate the "skills" they learned from school would be outdated...

    • If I were a kid again, I would spend zero time to learn programming. There is little drive to do so. Think of a fun project. Look at youtube and find a video of someone that has already done this. In a much more creative way with much more budget. If not on youtube, there will be code available on some site. Then if you have to do it, it is just a matter of stitching libraries together, which is pretty boring... Back in the early nineties, you had to write a program to make an animation. Not point and cl
      • Its the industry with the worst ageism. What do you do when your company lays off a ton of people when you are in your late 40s? Lie about your age I guess. I tell a lot of people unsure of what to do to get a business degree. Everyone has worked for a shitty boss making twice their pay. Might as well be you. You can even specialize in hospital administration or hospitality management. Be some regional big wig at Marriott bossing around tiktok wannabes.
      • by friedmud ( 512466 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @04:55PM (#63260891)

        This is an incredibly odd viewpoint. I'm over 40 and have been doing massively-parallel programming (modeling and simulation on supercomputers) in C++ for the last 2 decades... hardcore, low-level programming.

        Yet... Just three months ago I started writing a new web/phone app in my spare time using Javascript/Nodejs/React/MUI. Not only was it challenging - it was also fun. Yes, you get to use a ton of libraries... but that just allows you to think at an even higher level of how to deploy these libraries and get them to interact efficiently. Despite all the libraries, I've still written thousands of lines of code.

        What has changed is the time to market. Like I said, I've been working by myself for 3 months in my spare time and now am nearly ready to ship my first Beta. I already registered my company and set up all the interactions between my site and banks etc. and plan to start accepting payments within the next 6 months (after a decent Beta phase).

        Does that mean it's "easy" - hell no. It's complicated as hell... but if you are able to figure it all out you can get a hell of an acceleration. Does it mean that less programmers are needed? Hell no. There's a million things to do. I'm already thinking about the next app/website I want to make... I've got a list of ~10 or so. None of them are "groundbreaking" but some of them will at least yield a positive net.

        True programmers will always win out over people who just look at Stack Overflow and copy/paste code. Those people's inefficiencies will never make them as effective: regardless of how many libraries they use. A real programmer can stand on the shoulders of all of these libraries/giants and see _more_ - more possibilities, better algorithms, better applications. For me - it's an exciting time to be a programmer!

        • by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

          > This is an incredibly odd viewpoint. I'm over 40 and have been doing massively-parallel programming (modeling and simulation on supercomputers) in C++ for the last 2 decades...

          Yeah? Did you happen to massively-parallel model the ages of workers in tech?

          "And so the Los Angeles Times recently reported that Google has agreed to pay $11 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging Google engaged in a systemic practice of discriminating on the basis of age in hiring. Some 227 plaintiffs will collect an ave

    • Actually knowing Excel and Word would be really very useful for the majority of office dwellers.

    • by skam240 ( 789197 )

      You know what they taught me at school? Excel and Word. That's it

      I wish a lot of these kids had learned that much as that's a decent set of basics that any modern adult should have. As the summary says "A majority (56%) of this generation added that they had very basic to no digital skills education." and this definitely holds with some anecdotal experiences I've had. Young adults with worse computer know-how than my mom.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Sad part is, much of Gen Z actually needs that training. Most of them rarely interact with a windows computer. They're phone users who primarily use a narrow set of specific apps. That's pretty much all they know how to use.

      It's very weird for those of us that grew without smartphones, and where being IT native meant knowing how to get around a windows PC and its typical set of software.

    • I had an Office 2000 class... using Office 97.
    • by Altanar ( 56809 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @03:15PM (#63260583)
      And in all the school districts around me, they're teaching only Google Docs and Sheets. They don't use PCs at all. Kindergarten through 12th grade is all Chromebooks.
    • by Etcetera ( 14711 )

      There's probably a category error going on here. For some folks, Linux From Scratch is their entry to the world of "tech", but with so many layers of operator abstraction going on, even running a Linux Distro is a bit lit coding in assembly was when I was growing up, and this is for young adults entering the workforce! (When everything's a container, the OS is passe.)

      This speaks to a more specific issue though: Lack of "computer literacy" skills that Xennials and Millennials took for granted that they'd pic

    • They taught me equally useless crap-- TURTL and BASIC. Oh, and electric typewriters. Schools' job is to develop a curiosity and not to hold your hand. Judging by the number of kids I have met or interviewed with a curiousity in robotics or similar fields tells me that schools are doing their job, the big issue is lack of drive. Gaming seems to be a it part of that... but I'm not quite sure how it has changed from the previous generation.

      Workplace success though is a different thing than "computer skills."

      • by kmoser ( 1469707 )
        BASIC is an easy programming language to pick up, and can teach fundamental programming skills (if/then, loops, etc.). Electric typewriters can be useful for teaching touch typing, albeit probably no more or less useful than learning to touch type on a computer keyboard. (I learned on a manual typewriter, and I'm glad I did. Now get off my lawn.)

        If you're looking to learn enough computer skills in high school to get a job when you graduate, that's probably not going to happen. You'll be hard pressed to g
    • by ahodgson ( 74077 )

      I had typing class. On typewriters.

    • You know what they taught me at school? Excel and Word.

      [Channeling Monty Python and The Four Yorkshiremen [wikipedia.org] ... ]

      You were lucky to have Excel and Word! All I had in high school was (literally) a Teletype Model 33 [wikipedia.org] w/punch-tape reader and an acoustic modem.

      While that's true, more seriously, my college assembly-language class used PCs with Intel 80286 [wikipedia.org] CPUs because a printer next to the IBM 360 caught fire the previous semester and that system got toasted, and I had an IBM PC with 640k RAM running DOS at my first job -- because that was the state of the art for

  • BS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @02:10PM (#63260317)
    Kids at school have plenty of tech skills. This is just businesses whining as usual that the gov. didn't teach them whatever package they use. Train the people you want dammit
    • by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

      Kids at school have plenty of tech skills. This is just businesses whining as usual that the gov. didn't teach them whatever package they use. Train the people you want dammit

      I know there is a long tradition of here of not reading the fine article, but you could at least be assed to read the summary: hint, the survey was not of businesses. Indeed, the only "business" related content in the article is a quote from some CxO (of "social responsibility") who comments that, shocker, rich kids are better prepared than poor kids, and a link to another article about "top skills employers are looking for" none of which are "whatever package they use" (the top of the list being "strategi

    • by dirk ( 87083 )

      Yes and no. While Gen Z certainly has tech skills, what they know is how to use a smart phone and a tablet. The businesses then decide since they grew up using smart phones, they are tech gurus who know everything. Many zoomers don't have laptops, they operate strictly off phones and maybe a tablet or Chromebook. So when they get into a job and they are expected to know windows and Word and everything else, it is blamed on them for not being ready for business, when really it is the business that has not up

      • Re:BS (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sa666_666 ( 924613 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @02:35PM (#63260411)

        I sometimes think that only the Gen-X'ers really 'know' computers. You know, the ones that grew up during the birth of the home computer (70's and 80's). Older than that, and they never really ever got it. Younger than that, and it's all been too automated and abstracted away. It seems only the people who actually learned how computers work, because they had to to even use them, are the ones that really understand tech things.

        • Re: BS (Score:5, Insightful)

          by NagrothAgain ( 4130865 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @03:13PM (#63260573)
          In the 70s and 80s, and even through some of the 90s, the vast majority of people didn't have a home computer. And if they did, it was almost always never touched by the kids. Most people on Slashdot who grew up in those decades DID have and use a computer but they are the outliers not the bulk of the population. The younger Millenials really are the first generation where a home computer was a more normal/expected item.
        • The definition has changed. "Computers" was a discreet skill in the late 80's-early 90's. Now it is broken up into more logical subtexts. What has not happened though is progress in fundamentals-- that has largely been abstracted (dumbed-down if you prefer) today. I worked with boomers that focused on Fortran for solving problems in their daily workday like I did with Excel. I would hope kids today do the same with Grafana or something-- tools change with the times.

      • That seems to be a lot of it, they're used to the newer locked down devices where you never learn how to use a file system or fuss with cfg files. Think about modding games back in the 90s vs how quickly cheat detection would ban you if the game files were even accessible. When an app crashes on Android or iOS there's no system log to go look into it, it just was open one moment and closed the next and that's it.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Bullshit. People are confusing constant usage of things like phones and tablets as "tech skills".
      Watching movies, talking on the phone, and playing games, weren't "tech skills" 40 years ago....and they're not now.

      Take the fluff classes out of lower education, and stick to things that are the true foundation functioning in early adulthood. They can broaden their horizons when they get to college.

    • by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Yeah, this just sounds like Dell complaining that schools have been teaching Gen Z to use Apple products instead of the flaky Windows garbage that they happen to sell.

  • by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @02:12PM (#63260319)

    Plumbers, machinists and electricians make great money and are in high demand.

    • Plumbers, machinists and electricians make great money and are in high demand.

      I make more than my electrician father after 10 years of help desk work. He is on 30+ doing that.

      He does get a work truck. Bit jealous of that.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 )

        I make more than my electrician father after 10 years of help desk work.

        You make near or over $100/hr working help desk?

        Wow...lemme know where that job is at!!

        Last time I dealt with an electrician or plumber at my house, it is easily in the $100/hr ball park.

        Tough, nasty work...but these days, well compensated for...

        • He is an electrician, not a small business owner. Stop moving the goal posts.
          • He is an electrician, not a small business owner. Stop moving the goal posts.

            Err...not sure I get you.

            I guess my electricians and plumbers are kind of self employed companies of "1"....

            But what does it matter if they were self incorporated or not with regard to their charging me in the $100/hr ballpark?

            • Because you said electrician. Nothing about being a small business owner. Or some kinda handy man side hustle.

              My dad works for an electrical contractor. He goes to work and gets an hourly wage. He has no hand in charging you money. Take that up with the business owner.

              So I make more hourly than he does. But he has a company truck that he is allowed personal use of.
        • by hamburger lady ( 218108 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @02:36PM (#63260413)

          just because the plumber charges $100 an hour doesn't mean he's making $100 an hour.

        • by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

          The $100/hr is what the company charged you not the salary they paid the electrician or plumber.

          • The $100/hr is what the company charged you not the salary they paid the electrician or plumber.

            As I answered the other poster...I've never run into this.

            The plumbers and electricians I worked with didn't work for a "company" that someone else owned...they themselves were the company that came out and did the work and charged the rates.

            They were the electrician, licensed, etc...not some flunky someone sent out.

            • by kmoser ( 1469707 )
              Even those sole proprietors weren't making $100/hr for 8 hours a day. Like any freelancer, they only get paid for the hours they work. They don't get paid for down time between jobs. If they had an assistant, they paid the assistant out of their own pocket.
        • by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @02:41PM (#63260431)

          I make more than my electrician father after 10 years of help desk work.

          You make near or over $100/hr working help desk?

          Wow...lemme know where that job is at!!

          Last time I dealt with an electrician or plumber at my house, it is easily in the $100/hr ball park.

          Tough, nasty work...but these days, well compensated for...

          Haven't you ever worked at consulting? I typically was billed out 5x my take-home pay. I am sure it's lower for the trades than IT consulting, but there's a difference between what you earn from a client on site and what your actual take-home pay is after you've handled business expenses and the fact that you typically don't have 8h a day of billable work + travel to customer sites, etc. So that $100/h tradesman is lucky to get $50/h...which in my area is lower-middle-class for blue-collar work. Respectable, but not luxurious.

          • If $100k/year is lower-middle class where you live, electricians are making much more. The Apprentice (3rd year) I have doing some work for me might only get $30/hour, but once he is licensed it will be about $65/hour.

            That said, while there is a need for trades, for almost everyone it is important to have a sufficiently broad background that you can do different things beyond the direct skill or trade.

        • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @04:36PM (#63260829)

          You make near or over $100/hr working help desk?

          $100/hour? That like $4000/week. That means a plumber earns just shy of $200k a year so they are all driving around in Porsches considering they are earning about as much as many executives. Let me guess, you assumed that his life involves a magical portal gun that whisks him away from one job to another where he clocks in $100/hour for 40 hours a week right?

          Except it doesn't exist and as it turns out a plumber is billing you $100/hour for the time he is at your site. You didn't pay him to come to you, you didn't pay him while he was at home doing the boring parts of his business. You didn't pay him while he was scoping the job or buying the parts needed for it. You didn't pay him for the cancellation downtime. You didn't provide him healthcare, benefits, no holiday pay, not even public holidays.

          If you think an hourly rate is in any way related to your take home pay you desperately need to go back to school.

      • Plumbers, machinists and electricians make great money and are in high demand.

        I make more than my electrician father after 10 years of help desk work. He is on 30+ doing that.

        An anecdotal example is not necessarily reflective of a trend. Some examples are lawyers and software engineers. Hospitals hire software engineers at less than 100k in my area. Big tech salaries are typically north of 250k. A District Attorney or Public Defender makes around 50k-100k, last I heard. A Big Law lawyer starts at about 250k and goes into the millions per year.

        So your dad may be a bad negotiator or have a bad employer while you may have a good one.

        From what I've read, pay is going

      • let's bay area and the best you can do is an small studio apartment? and your father lives far away?

    • Not really (Score:5, Informative)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @03:10PM (#63260555)
      Plumbers make good money if they own their own business. That's not a plumber, that's a small businessman who happens to be a plumber. If you're a good plumber but not a good businessman you work for somebody else and you make crap.

      Machinists are another group that kinda make crap. I'm constantly seeing companies bitching about not being able to find skilled machinists in big cities for $20/hr. This isn't 1977. $20/hr is $5 bucks more than loading trucks at Target.

      As for electricians, I did that for a while. The formans made out Ok, the guy who tested the fire system did good too. The rank and file topped out around $20/hr. Again, it's not 1977 anymore.

      Oh, and all of these jobs are *hard* work. That means you can't do them in your mid-50s. You aren't physically able. Knew a guy who used to clean grease traps because he had an injury that made him unable to work as a carpenter.

      Lack of bargaining power and unions have absolutely devastated blue collar wages. Even more than use techies lost to outsourcing and H1-Bs. Labor shortages don't matter. Businesses just won't hire if they can't get cheap labor. I saw an article of a women who said she was leaving $5 million a year on the table because she couldn't find skilled machinists.

      She could pay them $140k/yr and still walk away with $1mil herself if that's true. She's either lying or so petty she's cut her nose off to spite her face. Either way she's not hiring.
    • Here is a bonus. My brother is an electrician as well. Works with my dad.
      Similar level of skill and exp in our fields. I make a lot more than him. Its fun. He gets uppity with me, I send him the specs of my computer that he can't afford to build.
      I make more my than my landscaper uncle, and he is the boss of that.
      Being an electrician, plumber, machinist is not a skill you want if you want to make money. Owning a business is.

      Stop lying to the children. These are not high skill trades. I have been in them
  • Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @02:17PM (#63260339)
    they don't need "tech skills", they need better fundamentals. More critical thinking. More math. Smaller class sizes (my kid's high school had more kids than desks, 5 or 6 kids just had to stand, and this was one of the "better" schools).

    This is just tech companies wanting more cheap labor. They want kids taught the skills they need *right now* so they can drive down wages and discard them for the next batch in a few years. While also complaining about lack of employees so they can get more of those sweet, sweet H1-Bs they can abuse.
    • by skam240 ( 789197 )

      No, they need both. While what you cite is invaluable I've run across plenty of Gen Zers who can barely use their own phone let alone a computer. Practical skills matter too as not being able to operate a computer will certainly hold most back in life

    • At least those kids weren't being used as desks!

    • Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @02:59PM (#63260509)

      The whole "big classes with less desks to resemble open office spaces" has been a fad in education in last decade or so. They built a couple of schools with those style of classrooms here in Finland recently. It's considered to be one of the reasons why our educational outcomes started crashing hard.

      That and inclusion, the practice of integrating all students into mainline classes, rather than having special education for kids most in need of help. Which sabotaged learning of everyone, as teachers can only teach at the speed and level of the slowest student.

      • The insanity of it is in an open office I don't spend every day listening to lectures. A room for students has a completely different purpose than a office for tech workers. Anyone that thinks duplicating the wrong structure will yield positive results is basically mentally deficient and needs to be removed from any position of authority.

  • We will all be telling AI what to do anyways.
    • The singularity is a long ways off, that is a future where we have an AI that can design new AIs. We as a species are probably doomed at that point, not a future you ought to be basing your education system around.

  • ...Gen Z-ers have feeling about tech. Did anyone actually get them to try to do anything work-related with tech to see if there's any basis to these feelings?
  • So this generation is both spending to much time on their devices and immersed in the information (and misinformation) that is the world as it is .. but at the same time lacking the basic skills to exist in that world?

    There's got to be a reporting disconnect somewhere in there, as it takes basic computer proficiency to just work on papers, complete assignments and even use the (school provided) computer/tablet present in all grades in my local public school system.

    • Facebook and TikTok are not "basic tech skills."

    • by Junta ( 36770 )

      Disclaimer, I think this is the same "next generation isn't ready for the real world" that is pretty much always been the case. Long-term workers lose perspective and presume 'their generation' was better equipped.

      However, I can see a disconnect between the devices and software they use constantly growing up and the devices and software that the current working generation is expected to work with. Gen X and older Millenials went through the awkward phase of home computing where you had to understand how t

      • but the Google platform is not really going to cut it for lot's of non basic office desktop apps.
        Also that OS does not really have an lot of drivers to cover most PC's and it goes EOL on hardware fast.

        • by Junta ( 36770 )

          Much can be said of the Unix workstations that Windows superseded at the time. 'Real' engineering applications wouldn't run on Windows. Serious business logic needed to run on mainframe, personal computer office software was hardly appropriate, and fundamentally couldn't be by the logic of the IT people of the day. More applications were ported and the applications that were there grew a bit of capability. However business workflows themselves adapted to suit the abilities and preferences of this wave o

    • by Z80a ( 971949 )

      Those kids are not using real computers, they're using walled gardens that protect em from any sort of flexibility at a point they don't even know what folders are.

  • by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @02:45PM (#63260455) Homepage
    I'm in my mid 30s and can remember the laughably bad "technology education" we had in primary and secondary school. I remember in grade 8 when multiple teachers got scared I was hacking, because I opened "command prompt". That lead to my parents getting called in, and with 4+ adult, including the "computer guy / IT guy" in the principals' office, I had to explain what I was doing, why I was doing it, and how none of it was hacking, all to end up the principal saying "We're going to restrict your computer access."

    Now I have two kids of my own, both in primary school, and nothing has changed, and in fact things have gotten worse. If a problem happened when I was in primary school, there was a good chance someone could have fixed it, but if a problem happens today, the teachers, administration and board can't do anything, because it's always leading back to a broken cloud config, hosted by Google or Microsoft, being seen on a Chromebook, that's locked into some education software license that restricts all functionality.

    I used to get in trouble for opening "command prompt" because it was scary and text based, but today a kid will get in trouble for saving a file outside of Google Docs or Microsoft 365. Today, if a kid speaks up that they don't want all their information tracked, or they would like to use a VPN, or instead of Google use DuckDuckGo, they'll get in trouble, because it's simply too much change, and doesn't fit with the over restrictive and total violation polices that boards have enacted.

    When my daughters grow up, they'll be functionally retarded when it comes to practical technology use, apart from what I've shown them. Kids today think everything should be hosted, prebuilt, delivered in a browser, and will always work, because it always has, and that's the narrative schools push on them. Even when they approach "programming", it's moving prebuilt blocks around a screen, and connecting them with arrows, without ever understanding the underlying concepts or seeing the code that got generated. When my younger daughter's "programming" project broke during an online class, the entire class had to stop, because no one, teacher included, had any idea what happened, how to troubleshoot it, or how to recover it. This is what is coming 10 years down the road, and we all better be prepared, because it's not just going to be rough, it will be impossible to function! I'm not worried who will replace me, I'm worried if I can ever be replaced / retire.
    • In other words, [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNl7GQFTULU]Idiocracy comes true[/url]
    • Kids today think everything should be hosted, prebuilt, delivered in a browser, and will always work, because it always has

      I felt the same way about you, when you were a kid and I was your age (not you, personally, obviously). You kids expected just to install software and use it, and it should just always work. You didn't have to learn how to write code to make the computer do something. To really understand, you need to start with a blank screen and a BASIC prompt.

      Cue someone 20 years older than me to talk about how it's no good if you don't have to solder the hardware yourself and load the program with toggle switches.

      An

      • That's hilarious you pointed out: "not you, personally, obviously", because I had to say that the other day after someone from Microsoft exploded when he felt I was personally blaming him, when I meant "You" as in "Microsoft".

        I expect things to work in the way that it should work most of the time, maybe 95%, but I'm not going to give up because a small error happens. I work with Jr Dev's, and Jr Engineers, who see the smallest error show up, and they want to write off the entire tool as if it had no value
  • The student's job is to learn.

    Students not learning does not equate to teachers not teaching.

    • Time and again I see the education system failing to teach students how to learn. Teachers are not there simply to feed students rote information to absorb. Once a student graduates they must continue learning on their own without someone to help them.

  • Arm students with the basic skills they need to learn and adapt. Teach them to touch type, read technical instructions, search for information, cite sources, and discern true and false statements using critical thinking. If they are going to go into engineering, software development, or business they will need a mathematics education beyond basic arithmetic.

  • Speaking as someone who went through high school during the 1979-1982 period, we never had "real" computer classes. The only computers that my (well to do) school district could afford at the time were Commodore PETs running on a 6502 chip. The first two years I was taking (introductory) computer science classes, I had to work through dumb terminals hooked to a mainframe. At the time I graduated college, the computers that were available to the consumer ran on pre-386 CPUs.

    Consequently, I have an extrem

  • by TraumaFox ( 1667643 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @03:28PM (#63260635)

    As someone who actually works in a school (grades 9-12), there is a prevailing mindset among teachers that kids "just get" technology and don't need to be taught anything. These teachers are mostly younger, tech-savvy millennials themselves, so it's not like we lack the capacity to actually teach this stuff, but no one sees it as necessary. I can only assume that the disconnect comes from our generation managing to figure things out on our own and expecting younger generations to do the same despite the technological landscape being very different. Many of our teachers expect incoming freshmen to already be fluent in software like Word and Excel because their curriculum depends on it, and they have no contingency plan for instances where this is not the case, leading to broader academic issues for these kids.

    I am reminded of this article [slashdot.org] about college students, a worsening problem which obviously starts younger, but it seems like no one wants to step up and do anything besides complain about it. It's frustrating because this should be an easy problem to solve, but too many people are blind to there being a problem at all until it's too late.

  • Basic school is supposed to teach general abilities and especially thinking skills to prepare you for life.

    Trade schools are where you learn a trade. In this regard 'Technology' skills are just like plumbing, mechanical, and electrical jobs. Uh oh did I just offend some people?
    • I was an IT teacher for 18 years in a vocational-tech school. One of the problems we always faced was recruitment. Yes, we had to recruit students. The home schools (feeder districts) see tech schools as a dumping ground for their less favorable students. Because of this many of the students that would benefit avoided the school because of the less than positive atmosphere. It was a nasty and disgusting "unspoken truth" that the home schools did this. We knew it, but don't say anything because "we need the
  • So this is the final generation? If so why bother, let them have fun and die happy. Vs being a miserable wage slave. .
  • by bferrell ( 253291 ) on Thursday February 02, 2023 @03:53PM (#63260705) Homepage Journal

    Don't they already know more than the old neck beards who built it?

    • Don't they already know more than the old neck beards who built it?

      Speaking as one of those neckbeards, no, they don't.

      I was fascinated by the "giant electronic brains" of the 1960s. You could walk between the CPU and memory of the IBM 7090. We learned to write software in assembly language because FORTRAN was too limiting.

      My children's first computer was my Apple II home computer that I lef them use for school assignments. I didn't teach thhem how to code for the 6502, but they did learn about typing and manipulating floppy disks. Unlike their peers they had no fear o

  • ... it doesn't prepare anybody for anything.
  • by EnsilZah ( 575600 ) <.moc.liamG. .ta. .haZlisnE.> on Thursday February 02, 2023 @05:44PM (#63261049)

    Because the article keeps throwing around nebulous terms like 'tech skills' and 'digital skills' without giving any concrete examples, and it's making me feel like the writer doesn't know either.
    Maybe I should chalk it down a gap in their writing skills.

UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn

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