The Education Industry

So it's been almost a month since I updated.

Usually, one would excuse oneself from such dereliction by citing a busy real life, poor health, or even something as mundane as a broken PC/connection.

I on the other hand had absolutely, positively nothing to do for the last month. Other than university stuff of course. I had nothing but free time, most of which I spent feeling guilty for having such free time and striking myself mentally for wanting to do things that are fun.

So what did I do instead? Nothing. I learned that Ellen Degeneres had a talk show, that Tony Danza (poor guy needs a month-long vacation too) has one as well. I learned that my local sci-fi station ran out of Season 7 or 8 Stargate SG-1 episodes and rotated back to Season 6.

That's all. I'm 23, in university and the only thing of note in my life was that I just recently read About a Boy by Nick Hornby. You know, that Hugh Grant movie a while back.

Really, I should blame myself and only myself for this crippling apathy. But being a product of the modern age I intend to find another thing to blame.

I blame education. Not the personal kind of learning, no that's important beyond all reach of cynicism and vitriol all of us jaded sons of bitches on the net can reach. I mean the whole industry of learning. No, that's not right. I mean the industry of 'teaching'. Four years now that I've been in university. I can only name two classes where I was actually taught things; first year Calculus and first year English.

I came, the professor taught, I learned.

All the classes since then I have NOT learned a single thing that I did not learn through the aid of Google. I kid you not. All the courses I've taken since were merely taken to provide a repository of search words so that I may Google it later. Or, if you're lucky enough, read about it in the textbook you bought for 100 bucks. I say 'if you're lucky enough' because there are quite a few classes out there that have expensive texts that have little to no relevance to your topic at hand.

Must be my fault right? I must be enrolled in fancy artsy-fartsy courses and I'm just suffering from existential bullspit. Nope. Something practical actually, computer science. Software Engineering to be exact.

How can a profession, while not a real accredited 'engineering' profession, require so little actual presence in a class to learn? Or understand fully. I tell you now, I get it. I get design, I get the importance of documentation and especially testing, and I get the need for teamwork. Teach me something that is... something else.

Software Engineering is about design, pure and simple. No matter the code, no matter the machines, no matter the dumbass bosses and clients, it's about designing good and appropriate software. Instead of being challenged I feel like I'm in high school all over again, just shuffling through assignment after assignment. It doesn't matter the actual specifics of a project, or how well it's designed, in the end code is a bit like the written language. You can't assign a grade to it. Sure you can look for this and that, especially if this and that was the point of an assignment, but in the end I'm telling you all it's not working.

It doesn't stick. All my fellow students and I are learning is how to jump (not when to jump) through hoops created by teaching assistants and professors.

This entire teaching industry, this post-secondary education, it can't be all like this can it? I sure as hell hope the med students (whom I regard with the utmost respect, fascination and not the least bit of seething fear) don't get away with the stuff compsci students pull.

I guess I'm just not engaged. I couldn't care less about java servlets or CVS repositories. Really. How is this specific crap helping me be a software engineer? I'm not creating it with a team, I'm writing it in isolation. It's not teaching me anything that I can apply elsewhere, to another project in another language. All I'm going to learn are specifics of this implementation.

What real post-secondary education needs to provide to those of us who don't really dwell on the details is a more comprehensive overview. I know that's a contradiction, or damn close to one, but it's the truth. Material Engineers should learn every nut and bolt, med students should learn what the blue vein does, and english majors should continue to find out just what one can do with all that free time.

You don't create software engineers to be programmers. It's not ego or some sense of superiority there, it's just a lot of wasted effort. If all I wanted was to be a programmer, there are far, far, far easier paths for me to have become one.

I wanted to learn that eye-opening, deeply insightful stuff about this (probably poorly) chosen future profession of mine. I had one class like that, taught by one of Canada's first computer scientists. He gave you perspective, insight, and applicable information. While it's nice that now I know how TCP/IP works it's gonna get filed into the back of my head, archived between the phone number of the one really hot girl that liked me in high school and my repository for important days in the calendar - meaning utterly inaccessible and forgotten.

That's why I write things down. That's why I learned to read. Don't teach me how to approach this, teach me how to grapple things LIKE this. That's how I can code. I can apply all that design knowledge and whatnot and take it with me to any new or old programming language. Specifics are things we deal with later. They are important, because the big picture is made up of details. But they are less important than the whole.

Great, I can do stuff in XML and SQL. Why haven't you gone into further detail into how relational databases work? Or how to respond appropriately to other types of databases. Or the theory behind that. All my courses, my classes are just shavings off icebergs of incredible mass. I feel inadequate with the tens of thousands of dollars worth of education I've apparently accumulated.

So what can change? Nothing. Universities need a bit of practicality sprinkled on their mass-produced automatons lest no one hires 'em when they're done. But they're lesser products for it.