Connecting dots

I read the national news in several areas, sports and technology being two of them, avidly every week.  Today, a couple of stories from different sectors highlighted my reading.  First was a sports article that was telling of records established by the top 10 teams in the NFL.  About midway through the article, the author said that the "record books" would indicate his point.  But immediately following the words "record books" was a parenthetical expression "(kidding: what are books?)."

The next article was really an explanation of a specialized training school.  It began with "Wanna know how to code?"  It went on to tell about a school that offered only programming courses including to know how to write code for mobile apps.  It also offered classes for kids called "Coding for Kids."  The name of this specialized training center was The Iron Yard, and the article showed a map of about 10 training centers scattered throughout the states.

I had two simultaneous thoughts.  One, how appropriate at the beginning of another school year that I should see these two articles on the same day that tell the story of what education should be, not what many, many children will be receiving.  They will go to a liberal arts school to prepare to give answers on tests that don't resemble the world they will enter.  Two, further proof that the dinosaurs who want to continue with the current educational landscape are very shortly to meet their demise.

And that's the size of it.  A sports page sarcastically referring to books and a specialized training center for children and adults learning something to prepare them for being really productive and well paid.  The article for Iron Yard predicted 1.4 million jobs available in 5 years for mobile application needs and only 400,000 people to fill those jobs.

Two years separate us from the magic number 2017, the end of the ten year war for supremacy between the education of books, reading, writing, simple math and the education of algorithms, programming, general computer savvy, and holographic virtuality.  I think by now the dinosaurs really do see the meteorite streaking through the sky and know that they are about to be decimated.  But they seem to have accepted their fate.