Re: How our young colleagues are being educated....

[Måns Nilsson <mansaxel () besserwisser org>]

Subject: Re: How our young colleagues are being educated.... Date: Wed, Dec 24, 2014 at 11:40:48AM -0500 Quoting Scott 
Morris (swm () emanon com):
 
> Now, as a side, one problem that I often have with various academic-based
> courses is that the people who teach them often don¹t have enough
> real-world experience (or not current anyway) in order to pass along any
> benefit in that matter.  There are many things that need to be addressed
> at this level within the higher-education arena, and I¹m sure it¹s not
> just related to networking subjects!

When I did teaching, it was as an employee hired to do network ops
first and academic stuff a definite second. I'm still not qualified
to even apply to the courses I taught, but I did get nice evaluations;
simply because what we taught was very connected to the NREN we ran. Thus
we could pick examples from Actual Reality and make the binary -> hex
conversions relevant. 

I'm thinking that network operations and design today is a field much
like workshop toolroom knowledge was back before CAD/CAM; there is a
solid and long scientific backing to what is done, in materials science,
maths, etc; the machines used are products from elevated precision
and experience centres, but still, you can't get them to do anything
useful without a well balanced theoretical background coupled to solid
hands-on experience. The rookie and the engineer from the construction
dept. will both need training to be useful and non-lethal in that
environment, even if the engineer can design a successful lathe. 

The rôle of network courses in academia, then, is a lot like looking out
for the programmer with the soldering iron. People who know how things
ought to work in theory are quite likely to be dangerous in practice. (and
don't get me started on studio sound engineers in live sound...)

It might be though, that I've simply been watching Keith Fenner on
Youtube too many late nights. (That is a recommendation, btw.)
-- 
Måns Nilsson     primary/secondary/besserwisser/machina
MN-1334-RIPE                             +46 705 989668
Uh-oh!!  I forgot to submit to COMPULSORY URINALYSIS!

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