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Re: Education and Productivity: Whats the Correlation?
Subject:Re: Education and Productivity: Whats the Correlation? From:Hillary Jones <hillary -at- NICHIMEN -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 24 Jun 1997 14:25:43 -0700
Elna Tymes wrote:
> It used to be assumed that when you went to college, you learned how to
> learn. You didn't just take courses and pass tests and get the piece of
> paper certifying that you'd spent seat-time doing so, somewhere along
> the line you were required to take courses that required you to do some
> research, come to conclusions, and defend those conclusions in
> discussions among people who knew something about your subject.
>
> Somehow in the intervening years the whole experience of going to
> college has become more focused on producing people with specific sets
> of skills -- not to say that this is all wrong: there is considerably
> more to learn about engineering and biology and medicine and public
> administration than there was some 30-50 years ago. However, the
> emphasis on learning how to learn as one major focus of the college
> experience has probably diminished some over time.
Oh boy, here we go again: "In my day things were better--we walked to
school ten miles in the snow and WE LIKED IT." (Remember the grumpy old
man from Saturday night live?) Seriously, to say colleges don't teach
students how to learn is an overgeneralization. I taught college upper
classmen for three years, students from a multitude of disciplines, and
many of them (though of course not all) knew how to learn.
On a constructive note, does anyone have suggestions for how to get the
info you need from a reluctant SME? How do you overcome hurtles like
being younger, being female, being not a programmer/engineer, being new
to the company? I'm interested to hear how different people deal with
these things.
Hillary Jones
--
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Hillary Jones
hillary -at- nichimen -dot- com
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