[SATLUG] Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage

[Al Castanoli]

On Mon, 2007-08-27 at 06:55 -0500, Borries Demeler wrote:
> ...
> > gotten into a technical field, but who says school kids need to be spoon
> > fed an education?  With access to the Internet and all these college
> > libraries online now, the knowledge is out there for the asking.
> > 
> ...
> > Throwing money at schools and telling them to spoon feed an education to
> > their charges doesn't work - I was in one of the "open school"
> > experiments in the 8th grade and we learned very little unless we were
> > motivated within.

> Hey Al,

> good to hear from you on this topic! So if education is not the problem,
> what do you think is causing the problem? The US is falling behind in 
> scientific publications, and we are exporting our knowledge at a record
> rate. How do you turn the ship around and get more domestic scientists?
> To me it seems right now the only thing we can do is hand out H1B visas
> to keep the people here whom we educate. I talked to some CS people the
> other day about this, and was told that enrollment was down significantly
> across the US in CS schools, and this is partly blamed on the dot com
> bust, but it doesn't look any different in non-CS science fields as far
> as I can tell. What should be done?

I've thought much about this, and the one thing our kids seem to lack is
parental involvement in their education. I didn't have anyone lording
over me to do my homework, but I did get it checked after I did it, and
had to redo many of my math problems and rework paragraphs in papers
before I turned them in.

When I was a kid, Bohr and Einstein (as well as Albert Schweitzer) were
considered at least as important in our culture as the athletes and
movie stars.  By the time I was in college (at least on the college
campus - we had some really bright folks in the Program for Afloat
College Education at sea) in the 1980's, though, folks who enjoyed
thermodynamics were considered nerds.  With a few rare exceptions, these
days, bright people who endeavour to understand more than was known
before are not held in much regard in American society.

My eighth grade English thesis (as it was for my whole class) was on the
Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Imagine trying to get an English class to
read three whole books today - I doubt it would be allowed, since it
would threaten the self-esteem of lazy students.  I fear egalitarian
politics in education are lowering expectations to the least common
denominator, and I have no idea how to dislodge the teachers unions from
this ruinous course.

Al Castanoli