I don’t normally blog about pseudo political agenda but being a parent and a social media adventures this item of book notoriety brought my fingers to my keyboard.
As a parent I take an active interest in my children’s line of study (when they allow me). I recently took a look at a secondary school media study curriculum and discussed a piece of homework with my daughter she was undertaking for this subject. I was disappointed as she is already publishing in a medium and platform way advanced, more fantastic and with great outreach than the detail she had been asked to learn here!
What was being learnt was a skill and a mindset that would be long dead as an industry by the time my child would be in any job that would reference anything close to the techniques being studied. A redundant, pointless and irrelevant educational investment.
A few days later this table was brought to my attention by a social media post. Having visited the site that produced the survey and read some of the media coverage and comments I felt frustrated and worried for a generation. My findings further underpinned my angst for the future of the UK competing in the digital, social, internet of things connected, collaborative world that my children will undoubtedly live and work in.
Why didn’t “Internet Entrepreneur” or “App Designer”, “Game Designer”, or “Social Media Engineer” (now there’s a title) appear in this list? Let alone “Computer Scientist”. I guess the wrong demographic was asked and the right ones never are. The survey was directed by the current generation of politicians and media pundits that will disadvantage the next generation because that’s how we hang on to power!
Don’t get me wrong, I love learning. Books “were” imperative to awareness of our developing world. However, Libraries and the art/role of a Librarian is now so last century. Projects like the “Google Books Library” is how our information future will be brought to life and the the history of books will be preservers (as they should be) forever as our past.
Schools media studies should reap the free world of the Internet and be based upon the students creating a blog, a web-site, even a Facebook community page or learn to broadcast as a YouTube channel. Most of this is free. They should learn an understanding of media management through SEO and Google Analytics. They should study how to measure the impact of social media interaction and data mining.
If I had my way, every library would become an Information Coffee Points. Yes that’s right, a coffee and a good digital book! The role of “Internet Barista” would be taught in high school and apprenticeships as a “Social Media Internet Barista” would be sponsored by Starbucks and Google. Come to think of it, do our children really need to be educated in the Internet of Things, Social Media, the Digital Information Age?
No they don’t. They are living it in spite of a generation of policy makers and historians controlling their education. In fact, with the amount of blogs and posting, the management of information, and the constant learning of new wonderful Internet things, the top 3 roles called out in this survey are inherent in an out dated generation of policy makersbut the adoption of the Internet. Maybe this post will give you cause to bookmark it.
My thanks goes to my daughter and Gavin at House Pesso for the inspiration behind this post.
A LIFE LESS ORDINARY 