In his speech 2/17/01 Atkinson stated that his long term goal in moving away from SAT scores as one criterion for admission was to "help strengthen high school curricula and pedagogy, create a stronger connection between what students accomplish in high school and their likelihood of being admitted to U.C., and focus student attention on mastery of subject matter rather than test preparation." (see http://nytimes.com and, for greater detail, the print copy of the Times 2/17/01) It appears that he wants to use the power of the U.C. system to encourage schools to focus on teaching relevant subject matter rather than spending too much time on building SAT test-taking skills.
I think that if you teach the "three Rs," and then measure achievement on them (not always so easy I admit) you will then have taken a pretty good measure of aptitude as well. If students can't demonstrate good achievement on the relevant subject matter they will have difficulty at the U. of C. Some kids are just not ever going to do as well as others with the "three Rs," et.al., and for these students education should be tailored, at least in part, to building on their particular strengths so that they can maximize their own potential.
The summary is not an "easy read" for me as I am very new to computers. I agree that Raskin is extremely thoughtful. He is not suggesting that we sacrifice complexity in computers (as suggested by Shotgun), but, rather, that we make them more in line with how people actually think and use information. While this may be a little pie in the sky right now, it is still an admirable long term goal. Why not adapt them more to ourselves? To the extent that we could do this, we would have a hell of an "operating system!"
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if some of the people most concerned about losing privacy are the same folks who are glued to the TV watching Survivor every Thursday.
In his speech 2/17/01 Atkinson stated that his long term goal in moving away from SAT scores as one criterion for admission was to "help strengthen high school curricula and pedagogy, create a stronger connection between what students accomplish in high school and their likelihood of being admitted to U.C., and focus student attention on mastery of subject matter rather than test preparation." (see http://nytimes.com and, for greater detail, the print copy of the Times 2/17/01) It appears that he wants to use the power of the U.C. system to encourage schools to focus on teaching relevant subject matter rather than spending too much time on building SAT test-taking skills. I think that if you teach the "three Rs," and then measure achievement on them (not always so easy I admit) you will then have taken a pretty good measure of aptitude as well. If students can't demonstrate good achievement on the relevant subject matter they will have difficulty at the U. of C. Some kids are just not ever going to do as well as others with the "three Rs," et.al., and for these students education should be tailored, at least in part, to building on their particular strengths so that they can maximize their own potential.
The summary is not an "easy read" for me as I am very new to computers. I agree that Raskin is extremely thoughtful. He is not suggesting that we sacrifice complexity in computers (as suggested by Shotgun), but, rather, that we make them more in line with how people actually think and use information. While this may be a little pie in the sky right now, it is still an admirable long term goal. Why not adapt them more to ourselves? To the extent that we could do this, we would have a hell of an "operating system!"