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Steve Jobs, Mark Steyn & the Future of Education


August1991

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Steyn is off on this jag again about how backward people use modern technology and yet remain backward.

Here's the link: Jetstones and Flintstones

Steyn gives the examples, as he has done before, that backward neanderthals can nevertheless use an iPhone to text messages. Modern technology does not make a person modern.

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I recently watched the Steve Jobs movie with Ashton Kutcher. I liked it. I have not read the book upon which, apparently, the movie was based but I understand the basic point: Jobs sought clarity so that ordinary people could use modern technology. (IMV, no one today knows how to do long division or more certainly, how to find a square root. Few people today know how to use a slide ruler or what I knew as a règle à calcul. Nowadays, everyone reaches for a calculator, or an iPhone.)

Believe me: Reaching for a calculator is much better than a slide rule. And a slide rule is far better than a calculation on paper. (IOW, despite being characterised on this forum as being conservative/Conservative, I have no objection to modern technology. On the contrary, I encourage/favour out-sourcing - or délocalisation - or use of a computer rather than a long/paper calculation.)

I guess my first point is that Jobs was too smart by half. He made his technology so easy to use that even neanderthals can use it - without knowing what they're doing.

And my second point? (The reason for noting education in the OP's title.) An even smarter Jobs would have ensured that when someone swipes a finger, they should know somehow that they are finding the root of a function. After all, to use a calculator to find a square root, you have to know at least what a square root is.

My third point. Steyn - as others - makes the error to believe that use of a technology is evidence of modernity. (Let me make this third point more clear: several thousand years ago, original thinkers invented written language - a technology so simple that many people can learn it. Nowadays, many people post nonsense on Internet forums.)

Edited by August1991
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I recently watched the Steve Jobs movie with Ashton Kutcher. I liked it. I have not read the book upon which, apparently, the movie was based but I understand the basic point: Jobs sought clarity so that ordinary people could use modern technology. (IMV, no one today knows how to do long division or more certainly, how to find a square root. Few people today know how to use a slide ruler or what I knew as a règle à calcul. Everyone reaches for a calculator, or an iPhone.)

I can do both long division and find a square root, or even a cube root! It's not hard.

I guess my first point is that Jobs was too smart by half. He made his technology so easy to use that even neanderthals can use it - without knowing what they're doing.

That was most certainly the intent.

And my second point? An even smarter Jobs would have ensured that when someone swipes a finger, they are finding the root of a function.

Huh? Finding a root is a rare application, swiping a finger is reserved for tasks you want to do constantly.

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Please take the time to read the biography. It is not a pretty picture and while the genius is documented it takes a very unfavorable commercial direction. His motives are not presented as positive or humanitarian but based on dark human selfish traits.

Most of the technical information is esoteric and confusing for me but the overall picture is not of either a nice person or somebody who is stable and moral. Perhaps his genius is the cause of his personal difficulties. I leave that to the reader.

I found the biography interesting and disturbing.

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Please take the time to read the biography. It is not a pretty picture and while the genius is documented it takes a very unfavorable commercial direction. His motives are not presented as positive or humanitarian but based on dark human selfish traits.

Because of your post Big Guy, I'll take the trouble to download the book to my eReader.

Thomas Alva Edison was not a nice person either. By all accounts, Albert Einstein was a ince person, but not to his wife. BG, that's not the point.

====

I started this thread because it is about education. How do we educate these ignorant, illiterate, superstitious idiots who surround us and bring them in to the modern world? They can use our technology but they don't understand Voltaire.

Jobs found a way to teach them. Steyn notes the problem of Jobs' teaching method.

Edited by August1991
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Jobs wasn't out to develop a "teaching method". Jobs was out to develop a successful personal electronics device. He succeeded.

Cell phones and portable computing devices existed long before the iPhone. It was never assumed that they were somehow intended to bring education to third worlders. Computers can be used to perform scientific calculations, or they can used to play silly games. Then again, so can a stick of charcoal.

I also question why you've drawn a distinction between a slide-rule and a calculator. Does the guy operating a slide-rule necessarily need to know math better than the guy operating the calculator? Both guys are just following a set of steps to get an answer out of a device. They don't need a fundamental understanding of the underlying mathematics; they just need to know the correct sequence of steps. In the case of the slide-rule, the actual mathematics was done by the guy who marked the lines on the device in the correct spacing. I've got a watch here with a slide-rule on the bezel. It's pretty cool! Say I want to multiply 12 by 17. I just turn the bezel so that the 12 on the outer ring lines up with the 10 on the inner ring. Then I follow the inner ring out to the 17, and the 17 on the inner ring lines up with about halfway between 20 and 21 on the outer ring. And I multiply by 10, and behold! 205! Pretty close to the correct answer. I have no idea how any of this works! The guy who decided where to put the numbers on the inner and outer rings obviously did a whole lot of careful calculations, but I don't need to know he did it. I just need to know the right steps. It might as well be a magic incantation. Poke buttons, spin the bezel to the right location, ask Siri, ask a Magic 8 Ball, what's the difference?

-k

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Maths is hard.

Steve Jobs became a genius by creating tech that looked nice that any idiot can use. He also made a stupid Apple Logo worth money so that people would actually pay more for a product that can do less than its competition.

Now sure how his plight compares to education. That being said the advent of the tablet may certainly change how we, as a society, consume information.

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In the interest of education, it should be noted that neanderthals were probably smarter than we are. We simply overwhelmed them through inter-breeding. However, we can thank them for our arthritis.

I believe that they still think they are.

When they log on to this board they continue to try to convince us of that fact. :P

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Cell phones and portable computing devices existed long before the iPhone.

Debateable, but you miss my main point.

Jobs made the ease of use universal: even illiterate, ignorant goat-herders in Kenya can use an iPhone.

My OP in part concerns how one guy - Jobs - managed to teach so many people so quickly something new, while our million-strong unionised teacher team, using so many so-called education theories, manages so badly.

Edited by August1991
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Debateable, but you miss my main point.

Jobs made the ease of use universal: even illiterate, ignorant goat-herders in Kenya can use an iPhone.

My OP in part concerns how one guy - Jobs - managed to teach so many people so quickly something new, while our million-strong unionised teacher team, using so many so-called education theories, manages so badly.

What makes you think our teachers are managing badly? If I recall correctly, Canada's education system ranks among the world's best, and the amount of information students learn today is higher than in the past. I'm curious why you've decided our education system is doing "so badly". Compared to what? Compared to Hong Kong and Finland? Compared to "the good old days"? This sounds like the kind of grumbling I overhear from senior citizens, not an analysis based on any sort of facts. "Bah, let me tell you, when we went to school, we learned the 3 Rs. Now kids are learning all this computer stuff but they can't even spell or do math anymore. They need to go back to the basics! That's what's wrong with kids these days!" Just more old-people BS.

Do you have any metrics to support this conclusion? Do you have any specific complaints about the curriculum? Do you even know what's in the curriculum? Please elaborate on why you feel our education system is doing such a bad job.

As for the proposition that Steve Jobs has succeeded at something the education system has failed at, it's fault. It falls on its face. Rather than explain why in my own words, I'll quote something a guy named August1991 wrote a few days ago:

I guess my first point is that Jobs was too smart by half. He made his technology so easy to use that even neanderthals can use it - without knowing what they're doing.

And my second point? (The reason for noting education in the OP's title.) An even smarter Jobs would have ensured that when someone swipes a finger, they should know somehow that they are finding the root of a function. After all, to use a calculator to find a square root, you have to know at least what a square root is.

The education system is not tasked with building a user interface so simple that even Islamic militants can use it. The education is tasked with teaching what a square root is and why you might need to calculate it, which is something you already stated that Jobs did not achieve.

-k

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  • 3 weeks later...

Believe me: Reaching for a calculator is much better than a slide rule. And a slide rule is far better than a calculation on paper. (IOW, despite being characterised on this forum as being conservative/Conservative, I have no objection to modern technology. On the contrary, I encourage/favour out-sourcing - or délocalisation - or use of a computer rather than a long/paper calculation.)

Do you think people should learn how to calculate on paper before using a calculator?
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My OP in part concerns how one guy - Jobs - managed to teach so many people so quickly something new, while our million-strong unionised teacher team, using so many so-called education theories, manages so badly.

Point of order: teachers have pretty much nothing to do with curriculum development.

CD at the policy level is done by provincial/state depts of education, and often refined by the larger school boards.

Luckily, many good teachers routinely ignore the latest fad and teach basics in a variety of methods depending on what works for different kids.

The shortfall in literacy and numeracy skills at the university level may have a couple of sources other than Mrs. Dombroski failing her students in Grade 2. First, many more people go to university now than a generation or two ago. This can be accomplished by lowering admission standards or qualifications by the universities, which has certainly happened recently in my part of Canada. There is also a strong likelihood that high school matriculation standards are lower. Students are rarely held back at any age when they fail academically, and this is in spite of a majority of teachers who don't approve of this policy, which has no input from them. Finally, if standards are lower at every level including high school graduation and university qualification, dumber people end up in uni classrooms than previously.

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  • 5 months later...

Jobs made the ease of use universal: even illiterate, ignorant goat-herders in Kenya can use an iPhone.

My OP in part concerns how one guy - Jobs - managed to teach so many people so quickly something new, while our million-strong unionised teacher team, using so many so-called education theories, manages so badly.

Interesting observation August. My PhD dissertation interest is abilities and intelligence - defends next year :) , I looked previously at Jobs from a intellectual capital perspective, tacit knowledge in a business model, market value - book value. I can say based on works by Gary Becker and others people in 1950's 1960's were intellectually smarter. Example of what I mean if we were to do a standard IQ measurement the difference is significant almost 10 points off.

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  • 6 years later...

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