In his MacTaggart lecture Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, criticised UK education and the tendency to split into two camps luvvies and boffins.
This neatly follows on from my last post (jeremyshiers.com/blog/who-are-the-scientists) where I talked about human beings habit of nominalization or labeling.
This is an extremely bad habit as it not only tends to divide people into groups but also leads to people self limiting themselves.
I don’t understand the science – I’m not a scientist
I don’t really know much about art – I’m an accountant.
If this was not bad enough there are also those on the sidelines (the media) who sneer at anyone how dares to stray out side their role or label.
But there are people active in both science and arts, a few names that come to mind are
| Brian Cox | physicist musician |
| Brian May | physicist musician |
| Fred Hoyle | physicist author |
| Graeme Garden | doctor comedian |
| Hank Wangford | doctor musician |
| Jonathan Miller | doctor comedian director everything |
In reporting this story the Guardian says
Schmidt’s comments echoed sentiments expressed by Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, who revealed this week that he was stepping down. “The Macintosh turned out so well because the people working on it were musicians, artists, poets and historians – who also happened to be excellent computer scientists,” Jobs once told the New York Times
It is a bit strange to quote Steve Jobs in this way as though he is supporting Eric Schimdt’s points as Jonathan Ive, Apple’s chief designer, is English and Arm (based in Cambridge England) design the processors in iPods and iPads.
Eric Schmidt talks as though all British success is in the past. Which is strange as British people enjoy world wide success in many areas, some are
- Music
- Cinema
- Theatre
- Science
- Fashion
- Cookery
- Engineering
Perhaps someone needs to point out that the World Wide Web was invented by an english computer scientist, Sir Tim Berners Lee, who choose to give his idea to the world. And Google’s profits are entirely due to this invention.
The word education from the Latin word educatus, past participle of educare which means “to bring up”, and educere “to lead out” or “to draw out”.
As anyone who has watched the film Thunderbirds will know, one of the principles of eastern martial arts is to use your opponents strength against them.
If you try to get people to learn by drilling or cramming facts into them it will be a struggle.
But if you can inspire them, create a sense of fascination and wonder then you work is pretty much done as their own curiosity will drive them on to find out more.
So try encourage any or all of these
- Lets have a go and see what happens
- What would happen if
- I wonder
I am confused as to why Eric Schmidt is keen for British schools should teach computer science. Surely the history of startups in the US is of people tinkering in their garage, basement or college dorm.
In the 1970s and 80s we had computers like Spectrum and BBC and many of the people who used them tended to program them. Unfortunately today many people just tend to use computers for email, web browsing and office. This is not the complete truth as there many people working on open source projects.
Two products that aimed at encouraging people (and especially children) to have a go are
| Raspberry Pi | a complete Arm computer on a board for about £15 |
| Arduino | an Electronics and Programming prototyping system. Starter kits cost about £59. |
which are described in more detail in this Guardian article Kids Today Need A Licence To Tinker
Lest we forget there is still Maplin mecca to several generations of electronics hobbyists and tinkerers.
Today Charles Darwin is recognised as a genius who pretty much created a new branch of science, Evolution. But Charles Darwin not a scientist he was country gentleman of independent means. He was driven by curiosity and a need to know and explain. He didn’t need any label or anyone’s authority to do what he did, he just did it because it interested him and he wanted to. And if he had not followed his curiosity he would never have discovered anything.
Anyone can do this, you for example, providing you are interested enough to be motivated to have a go. It does not need to be your job, you do not need a degree or training and you definitely don’t need a “label”. If you are interested you will learn as you go along.
One person who has followed his interest is Richard Steward from the Blyth Estuary Group. Richard has spent 6 years studying investigating and learning about sea levels and salt marsh. This was not his job, he has retired. He was just interested and wanted to learn more, he was also sceptical of the SMP proposals of the Environment Agency and the claims they make to justify these schemes.
Richard has documented the results of his research. Why not download a copy and read what he has to say.
