Although Google have gone way beyond challenger status into a market leader across all their products, they still remain incredibly obsessed at the core of their business. Obsessed with delivering technology which enables users to use the web more effectively and efficiently. Obsessed with uniting up all their platforms to give seamless consumer movement across all of them.
This obsession runs deep. I found an interesting article on the Daily Mail which showed Eric Schmidt’s obsession with things which are sadly way beyond his control. (yes – interesting + Daily Mail together in one sentence) In a speech which he made in August 2011, Eric Schmidt criticizes the UK education system for focusing on “luvvy” subjects rather than the nerdy ones. His points are smart though, when we are increasingly in a world which has devalued the written word and revalued technology, why are we ignoring sciences and engineering to focus on the written or spoken word.
According to a recent article in The Guardian, it is actually only England that has fallen drastically behind. In Scotland, computers are linked into every subject and some schools are even giving lessons to takeaway as downloadable podcasts. Smart stuff.
Schmidt is right in his assessment of our educational system. Computer Science, the thing that drives culture today, is sadly missing from the majority of schools. This means our children are missing out on learning really simple programming skills something which every 12 and 13 year old in South Korea has access to.
In recent months, the UK government has indeed started to think about how they do this and it is great to see Michael Gove pick up on this necessity.
“One of the problems we’ve had is that the ICT curriculum in the past has been written for a subject that is changing all the time. I think that what we should have is computer science in the future – and how it fits in to the curriculum is something we need to be talking to scientists, to experts in coding and to young people about.”
Perhaps now as places like the Silicon Roundabout and Silicon Fen boom in terms of new start-ups, we’ll see a nation obsessed with teaching not just computer literacy, but coding, app development and computer expertise. That is surely a good thing.
