I think that’s the real crux of it. Most people don’t know. There may have been a bump in literacy, but most people don’t know, don’t care, and don’t need to. If we had better education, this kind of thing could be a core class. I had computer classes, but they mainly focused on typing and specific programs. Basically nothing about components, the command prompt, programming, different OS, etc. Granted this was many years ago, but I live in Florida. So, it’s probably worse.
Counterpoint, most of the stuff I learned in my highschool A+ class (aimed at teaching you enough to pass a certification test that proves you can repair computers) was outdated already that year, and it’s like 95% outdated now. Typing and business productivity app skills are still directly valuable for most modern people.
Most valuable skills are things like learning how to learn, critical thinking, judgement, understanding the value of time, humility, etc. I’ll say that the A+ course was much better than most classes at growing those skills for me, but I could say the same thing about the construction course I took. American school system, at least when I was in it, is totally happy to output kids that only know math, science, english, and arts. It’s hard to teach those life skills, harder to test for them, do we just don’t.
Business apps are among the most useless things to teach, mainly because by the time they get out of school those apps already work very differently but also because they are useful to a very limited set of jobs.
I think that’s the real crux of it. Most people don’t know. There may have been a bump in literacy, but most people don’t know, don’t care, and don’t need to. If we had better education, this kind of thing could be a core class. I had computer classes, but they mainly focused on typing and specific programs. Basically nothing about components, the command prompt, programming, different OS, etc. Granted this was many years ago, but I live in Florida. So, it’s probably worse.
Counterpoint, most of the stuff I learned in my highschool A+ class (aimed at teaching you enough to pass a certification test that proves you can repair computers) was outdated already that year, and it’s like 95% outdated now. Typing and business productivity app skills are still directly valuable for most modern people.
Most valuable skills are things like learning how to learn, critical thinking, judgement, understanding the value of time, humility, etc. I’ll say that the A+ course was much better than most classes at growing those skills for me, but I could say the same thing about the construction course I took. American school system, at least when I was in it, is totally happy to output kids that only know math, science, english, and arts. It’s hard to teach those life skills, harder to test for them, do we just don’t.
Business apps are among the most useless things to teach, mainly because by the time they get out of school those apps already work very differently but also because they are useful to a very limited set of jobs.