PegaSoft Canada White Paper
Draft - 2003
By Ken O. Burtch
In Aesop's fable about the Buffoon and the Countryman, at a country fair there was a Buffoon who made all the people laugh by imitating the cries of various animals. he finished off by squeaking so like a pig that the spectators thought that he had a porker concealed about him. But a Countryman who stood by said: "Call that a pig's squeak! You give me till tomorrow and I will show you what it's like." The audience laughed, but the next day, sure enough, the Countryman appeared on the stage, and putting his head down squealed so hideously that the spectators hissed and threw stones at him to make him stop. "You fools!" he cried, "see what you have been hissing," and held up a little pig whose ear he had been pinching to make him utter the squeals. The moral is that men often applaud an imitation and his the real thing.
Television is so false that I don't believe that a person can be a writer and watch TV A friend in post-production work explained how every line is redubbed in a studio, and every footstep enhanced, but people take for granted that what is presented as entertainment is real. When the average North American watches 4 hours of TV a day, they are consuming vast amounts of fake data. Writers who watch TV must not be deceived into thinking they are doing research into creative and original ideas.
It is the same way with universities.
A 2002 study showed that Ontario has the worst university education in all of Canada.
Apprenticeship is the most effective way to teach computing.
A professor once said that even an apprenticeship program from the 1800s had more credibility than the current system. The accuracy of the grade system is just an illusion. It's no wonder that businesses don't take diplomas seriously anymore.
A professor who makes theories about God in a room with 4 white walls will create a God of White Walls. If you don't challenging yourself, you will only settle for what you are. People who say they don't need the Bible or therapy are people who don't want to be challenged or to have goals presented. You can't improve your life without opposition and goal setting. Even Satan has his place in God's creation.
When I was taking my Master's at Queen's University, my girlfriend became involved in a religious cult. When I mentioned this to a fellow student, he said, "So what? She's not hurting anybody except herself. Why should you care? Let her ruin her life since it doesn't affect you."
Because of the cutbacks to philosophy (and, to a certain extent, theology), Prof. Skilton argued that we advanced so much technologically from the stone knife, but morally the human race hadn't advanced at all from their caveman ancestors. He once pointed to his Atari ST and said to me, "THAT is the problem with our society. We can compute the improvement of efficiency that moving someone's desk 5 feet closer to the bathroom would achieve, but universities are not teaching people who can use such technology responsibly." We've given the atomic bomb to cavemen who couldn't handle a stone knife.
Senator Cleghorn, the basis for the Warner Brother's character Foghorn Leghorn. "I say, Boy, that's necessary but not sufficient. Say, Boy, why aren't you laughing?"
In “Searching for the Holy Grail of Software Engineering”, Robert Glass says “Many computer scientists use [ad hoc] as a term of derision, interpreting the term to mean “unstructured” and even “chaotic”. But the dictionary has an entirely different definition for the term. In all the dictionaries I referred to—and I have looked in many because the dictionary definition I found is so different from the common computer science usage—the term means “focused on the problem at hand”.”
Any more companies only ask for a "degree" of some sort. It shouldn't be surprising. Academia today has lost its way and many university degrees aren't worth the paper they are printed on. This is not my idea, but the belief of many professors I've spoken with over the years.
I once pointed out to a professor that I could predict the grade of a course based on the professor I took it with. It wouldn't matter the subject material. My grade could change from a "A" to a "C" through no fault of my own. Likewise, there must be "C" students receiving "A's". He agreed completely: the grading system makes no sense and does not accurately reflect the abilities and accomplishments of a student. How could a student's academic career be solely be determined on such an unstable and subjective measurement? What was worse, most academics know this already.
The fact that grades change so much in regard to the professor lecturing should be no surprise. Professors are hired for their research, not their teaching abilities. I had one professor who--quite literally--lecture by opening the text book and reading the contents word-for-word. Since we had already read the text the previous night, the lectures were essentially useless and unimaginably boring.
In all companies I've worked for, concepts beyond the first year of university are considered to be dangerous. Don't expect to find so much as an AVL tree in the business world. Short-term savings and hurried production schedules mean inefficient designs and primitive coding.
[Missy being dismissed by Queen's students] [Cain and Able: am I my brother’s keeper? Yes.]
A recent episode of 60 Minutes showed that most university students feel they are smarter than previous generations since their grades are higher. But grades are artificially higher and the holier than thou attitude of professors contribute to this delusion.
The economics professor said that he didn't understand farming: that it was life any other business. North America is a place where we not only purchase whatever fruit or vegetables we want, but often from what country we want. To most of the world, farming is a matter of live and death.
What my economics professor was saying was that farmers were dumb and they didn't understand economics. That's what Fred Karner believed. Seeing a lot of money in garlic, he planted a large field of it intending to make a lot of money. If Fred had researched garlic, he would have realized why farmers weren't growing it: Fred's one field was larger than the Canadian demand for an entire year. People just don't need that much garlic. In the end, Fred plowed the field under, never selling a single bulb.
Others have had similar success. A professor suggested that the farmers should plant walnuts, but was unable to determine who would buy those millions of nuts. More walnut milk, my dear? Another executive took over a major Canadian winery and cancelled all the local grape contracts because New York state grapes were cheaper. What did the American's do? They raised their prices.
In an English lecture, the professor pulled out a copy of the Bible. He read a section out to the class as a demonstration of ancient "literature" and how poor the folks in the old days were at writing because the Bible read more like a history than a book.
The point isn't whether one believes in God or not, but rather the arrogance of the professor. The rest of my English lectures went the same way: we were given 3 days to read an important work of English literature and if we questioned the professor's opinions on the work, we were told that we were rhetorical". That's were I learned that the word "rhetoric" means "shut up and keep your opinions to yourself", not a form of expression. Students were taught to toe the line rather than to explore and appreciate the work of great English authors.
The rapid scientific growth of the 1900s may not be sustainable.
Niagara College hired a COO with a questionable reputation to teach there. Did they check with the people who worked under him, the people with nothing to lose, for his credentials?
What's the difference of tenure to the process that keeps a bad manager in place? What safeguards are there in one and not the other? Tenure doesn't work when the underlying system of checks and balances that lead to tenure are broken.
Bell-curve grading is a failure but is still used.
Go to university to learn how to work for someone else.
Accuracy isn't the same as honest.
An English professor gave me a "B" on a paper he agreed with but an "F" with one that didn't reflect his opinions. This kills original thought to protect his own position. It's not an isolated case.
Doctor's today have all sorts of weird recommendations for pregnant mothers. Don't eat sugar. Don't eat chocolate. Who is giving these recommendations? Doctors born of women who ate sugar and chocolate. Seemingly intelligent advice can be proven false with a little common sense.
Knowledge workers cannot put in 12 hours a day. This includes nurses.
[S p. 165] People don't want to learn when their self-image is on the line. It is easier to dismiss something than to investigate it, admit an error, or standup against popular theory. [church]
"It is easier to love a person who seeks out your wisdom, who travels to your territory to obtain it, who pays you for your attention and whose demands upon you are strictly limited to fifty minutes at a time than it is to love someone who regards your attention as a right, whose demands may not be limited, who does not perceive you as an authority figure and who does not solicit your teaching." [Peck pg.178], cmp church elders