From: Phil Osborn (philosborn@altavista.com)
Date: Mon Feb 05 2001 - 21:37:07 MST
Ho hum... another day dealing with the dregs.
Life has to be better than this. I have been trying out the local ROP - "Regional Occupational ???," basically free (socialized) adult education, just to see what happens when you hand a virtually unlimited budget to people with no feedback or oversight, but only the need to demonstrate warm bodies in attendance.
I have tested the waters of a half-dozen different computer related classes so far. My qualifications for evaluating the courses are ten years of professional desktop publishing and design, ten years prior of programming, hacking, and computer graphics, animation and video, and a physics degree, which means that I have probably managed to take a few courses that were actually well taught.
The first course I took, introductory animation, was actually quite good. I don't know why the instructor is wasting his time there. He puts a huge effort into his presentations, is highly knowledgeable in the field and is quite demanding of the students. Consequently, each semester his class ends with one or two survivors.
My expectations having been set by that course, I then tried the advanced graphics course, hoping to learn PhotoShop (I use COREL at work). The guy teaching it had obviously never taught a day in his life, and substituted blustering and arrogance for teaching, and after I wasted two Saturday mornings, I gave up on him.
I tried another class in advanced design, where I found a teacher who had never worked a day in the industry, and whose ideas might have been good in 1990, but were way out of touch with current reality. So I tried the same class with a different teacher, an old codger who knew the business backwards and forwards, but whose 68040-based Macs were more worn out than he was. The authorities at ROP were willing to buy state of the art machines if they were PCs, but forget Macs. Sad, sad, sad, especially as the Mac is still the machine of choice for graphics professionals, by a margin of about four to one.
Then I found a class taught by a woman who had been a professional designer and graphic artist long before taking up teaching. This was a good experience and I learned a good deal. I'm taking a second semester with her, focusing on PhotoShop. At the same time, I decided to try a class in advanced Web design (I do the 200+ page company website, but I'm entirely self-taught).
This was the pits. A crew of high-school boys has determined that they can intimidate the teacher, who is in his sixties, I sure. (ROP mixes adults and high-schoolers looking for course credit.) So his response has evolved to teaching nothing at all - literally - so that the adults, who came to actually learn something, will give up in despair after a couple of classes. Then the high-schoolers can bring in their buds and partai, partai. It's obvious that the parents have learned that they can dump their unruly teens at ROP, where they can't get into serious trouble, one assumes.
In the animation course, each semester starts with a crew of these ruffians attempting to intimidate the teacher, who proceeds to deal with them, letting them know about his black belt up front. They soon leave, voluntarilly or otherwise. ROP, however, is not happy with this, clearly. They need to show bodies on the rolls to justify all the bucks thrown at them. It's only the fact that the animation teacher is known and has a reputation ourside of teaching that has protected him.
Most of the teachers are totally intimidated by the need to keep the rolls up. Some, such as my graphics teacher, are so good that they attract a dedicated crew of students that come back semester after semester. Thus, she can stand up to anyone who gets seriously out of line.
Others, such as the Web programming teacher, just give up, and the hoodlums take over and use the class to play games or look at porno. Such are the wonders of socialized education...
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