Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

I couldn’t help but laugh when reading one of Martin Samuel’s latest commentaries. Here are the main highlights:

The schools are the worst. In business, I can almost understand it. At work, you might be confronted by a person from a different generation, or a different culture, and it is important to maintain an appearance that will not make them uncomfortable. Nose-rings and cross- dressing are out for the same reasons. But schools? Institutions of learning, expression, free thought, with the capacity to change the outlook of future generations: no wonder this place is in a mess if the first thing we do is batter the individuality out of every citizen at the age of 12.

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You read the material on these school websites or pick up a glossy prospectus or mission statement and it is wall-to-wall buzzwords about freedom and nurturing the individual: “vibrant… exciting… opportunities… enthusiasm”. Boot camp is not mentioned. There might be some blather about traditional values thrown in for those that like mathematics learned parrot fashion, but no one lets on that a school aspires to row after row of uniform adolescents, looking the same. My idea of traditional values is to turn out kids that can read, write, spell and think for themselves, not to have them properly kitted out and groomed in appearance and mind for a career with the Royal Air Force. Regulation haircuts produce regulation thinkers, and we’ve got enough of those, thanks. That is why we are where we are.

What I find amusing is that we are churning out thousands of students now that opt for university courses that fit their ‘lifestyle and leisure priorities’. John Reynolds had a good article in the Sunday Independent a number of months back on the third level education trends.

One of the things commentators highlight when discussing science, engineering and IT courses is that they aren’t ’sexy’ in the eyes of Generation Y. What is interesting to note is that they are opting for creative courses like the arts, media, graphic design, etc. A lot of people put this down to the fact that Ireland has become an affluent society. However if you look at emerging trends like the undercurrent of DIY hackers, epitomised by Maker Faire, it is obvious that we’re missing out on engaging the inner geek in all of us during childhood. Just look through some of the following videos and you can see that people like to tinker.

Teen makes wrist mounted flame thrower (and almost burns his face off.)

Working NES controller coffee table.

Wii Remote transformed into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen and a head-mounted 3-D viewer.

So how do we go about unlocking young people’s inner curiousity and exploit it for the ICT industry?