Gates vs. Jobs on Education
There’s an interesting OpEd piece from the NYT that underscores the dichotomy within higher education: do we train for employable skills, or educate people so they can learn for themselves? Is is a focused skill-set that people need, or a broader sense of developing knowledge? It’s basically a piece contrasting the educational views of two well-known and successful college drop-outs: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. If you click through to the discussion link, there is a series of responses you can read. I’m particularly taken with Trachtenberg’s statement: “Gates is studying the science of education. Jobs is creating the art of learning.” I think that’s at the heart of the current conflict of education - but its hard for me to see why there isn’t room for both approaches…
Follow-up: Through the comments, I found my way to Snow’s essay Two Cultures, which you can read via Google Books. But there’s a short re-cap and exploratory article published in The Telegraph. While the debate was central to Britain, it more-or-less reflects the dichotomy we see in higher education in the US today. In these times of budget cuts, the conflict is made more clear as resources go to specific programs, which in essence emphasize specific ways of learning. The question becomes is this being well-thought out as a matter of curriculum design, or is it a response to student demand?
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