There were some great comments to my Depressed posting of March 23rd. If you have not read them, by all means do so. Excellent input. My thanks to Steve, Roy Brixen and Joe Sloop.
Joe, thanks for taking the time to fill us in on the top down inverted curriculum. I certainly don't claim to have invented it and frankly it is good to hear some background about it. The Navy and possibly other services probably still have an electronics technician training program somewhat like that today. You just don't need a great deal of electronic theory to fix modern electronic equipment. I can give you some examples from my own experience.
When I was running Heathkit's education and publishing business, we talked often about developing a TV servicing course to complement our basic electronic courses. And Heathkit had a premire kit TV to go along with it. So we started in on the research. One of the developers, Phil Cole, did a great job of figuring out what industry really needed. After interviewing TV service personnel and even observing them as well as discussions with the manufacturers, the conclusion was that fixing TVs had very little to do with electronics. Looking at job duties and descriptions then trying to deduce learning objectives, it quickly became obvious, the instruction was going to be mostly non-electronic. You didn't need to know that much as modular nature of TV sets made them easy to diagonse and repair by just replacing modules. As Joe Sloop points out, that is the way it went in the 70s and 80s. What's electronics got to do with it?
I saw this myself. At one time during my career I had a TV service business under my managment. It did a good job. One day I stopped by to see how things were going and asked my lead tech what he was doing and how he was doing it. He proceeded to attempt to explain his thinking based on the Howard W. Sams schematics he was using. But being the theory whiz I was, I could tell he was all wet. I was horrified. Yet, I did not say anything. He fixed the TV set successfully that day. It dawned on me that everything he did in the troubleshooting relied very little on electronic circuit theory and the other stuff we force on students today. Dumb....
Another time my younger son, after a couple years in college, decided he wanted to fix PCs for a living. It was right about the time the A+ certification came about. I asked him what his plan was for learning the electronics and digital that was the basis for PCs. He said, "Dad, you don't have to know anything about electronics to fix PCs!" And after some explanation and further consideration on my own, I realized he was right. He went on the pass the A+ exam on the first pass and he has moved onward and upward in the PC networking business.
Joe also hit upon a couple of other things that really nag at me. For example, no one would buy into the inverted curriculum. I suspect that would be the same today. I wonder sometime if we will ever be able to change. Look at elementary and secondary education. It will never change, even if we do discover something better. Faculty, wherever they may be, love their comfort zone. And, oh by the way, where is our salary increase? Sorry to be so cynical.
Another thing Joe said also hit home. State mandated curriculum and processes. His is North Carolina. Texas has something similar. In Texas changes are possible, but it is not easy. Complete course or curriculum changes would never make it though the system. Progress.
Anyway, let's keep trudging along. Never say die..... While nothing may ever be done, at least we tried. If we give up, nothing will ever happen. Think one word: HOPE
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