[Edu-sig] New articles on Medium.... (not all by me :-D)

[kirby urner]

Thanks for those thoughts and feedback Charles, on Medium as well. I'm
still learning about how to use that technology.

Finding other writings in the same ballpark, following and liking, also
commenting, is how to develop more of a readership.

I have several interconnected published manuscripts, mostly in the ballpark
of American Transcendentalism (Emerson, Whitman, Fuller...) meets Quakers
(Whitman, Woolman...). AP Study Notes linked. :-D [1]

Great question about certification.

I think at minimum a code school or high school needs to authenticate that
a specific student attended and completed such and such programs and here's
a link to the student's on-line portfolio.

Whether students go to a brick and mortar building for their work-study is
a separate questions.  Could be a mix of modalities.

As I suggest in the essay, we have two mainstream modes of education:

* the work place is a studio, with desktops, canvas objects, tools, which
one accumulates and learns to work with (workflows), per best practices

* the work place as a succession of classrooms with a locker for personal
effects, no personal workspace provided, you're "on tour" or "on a beat"
(room to room migration)

Those are two ends of a spectrum with many gradations in between.

However I'm suggesting the first way is the code school way i.e. lots of
"alone time" doing disciplined activities is presumed.

I put "alone time" in quotes because a personal workspace (PWS) is in
principle interconnected with others via ethernet etc. so really its a
matter of learning to carve out free time (slack).

There's ambiguity in concepts like "high school" as we spontaneously think
of teenagers, whereas it's also an assemblage of study topics and
activities (sports, theater....) that's open to oldsters in principle.

A forty-year-old newcomer to a community with English as a second language
might find herself working on a GED from home, ditto code school.

Or with Chinese as a second language if working through a curriculum that's
not in English.

When I talk about code school and high school "converging" it's less about
mixing age groups i.e. having 40-year-olds in a conventional high school,
and more about mixing topics.

How does the school teach XYZ coordinates?  3D printer?  Ray tracer?
Visual Python?  Or no computers at all?

Currently, codes schools don't touch 3D graphics that much because the
"front end" (part of being a "full stack developer") has a "flat" (2D)
front end (HTML + CSS + SVG).

If we start seeing more polyhedrons appearing in the code school setting,
to me that'll be a sign that high school and code school are convergent
institutions.

In historical terms, I'd say the locker-based room-to-room high school is
more about becoming a factory worker or crew member who works for the
capitalist bosses.

You go to the mine everyday, having changed clothes in a locker room, but
it's not your mine or oil rig.  You're a team player (thanks to sports) and
don't require a lot of privacy (maybe a bunk is enough, on a sub).

The personal workspace people are being groomed for cubicles or
full-fledged offices (officers) and are closer to landed aristocrats in
having lots of personal affairs and finances, ownership responsibilities.

The conventional high schools were geared more to the factory worker age
and still make a good pipeline into military service.  Office workers need
more personal study space, which is what college provides.

Kirby


[1]
https://www.apstudynotes.org/us-history/topics/transcendentalism-religion-and-utopian-movements/
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