At MIT, a new focus on generating "people" skills

This boston.com article goes back to 2009, but makes an excellent case for the necessity of "soft skills" in the business world, even for engineering and technology students.  It's probably as effective as any article I've seen in explaining why the Ameribotics' mission includes a broad range of arts, humanities, business and people skills rather than simple STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills.

What do you think?  Does our education of youth need to be more specialized and targeted to meet the demands of the 21st century, like education systems in India and China?  Or does it need to be more broad and diverse and focused on the whole person?  Certainly, there are strong arguments on either side of that discussion.

Blink

We at Ameribotics are compelled by the merging of art and science -- we believe the synthesis of right-brained and left-brained development is the key to our mission of whole-person development through robotics.

So, when one of us sees something like this video from CBS 4 in Denver, we get all excited. Please excuse my enthusiasm.

Check out this video and by all means, if you're in the Denver area, try to visit this exhibit at the Denver Art Museum.

Passion, not just Data, Should Drive Learning

Academic standards are like the old saying about fire: "Great servant, terrible master".

Yes, we need standards to ensure that our children are learning to read, write, do basic math and think.

But in what seems to be an ever-increasing enslavement to academic standardization, have we sold out our childrens' natural passion for learning?

Lisa Nielsen has an excellent piece in the Huffington Post discussing standardized tests and how they're stifling our children -- and, perhaps even more importantly, our teachers.

Valedictorian Speaks out Against Schooling

If only more of us had the true thinking skills -- and chutzpah -- of Erica Goldson, the young lady who gave this amazing speech in 2010, we could turn around the education industry in no time!

I'd love to hear peoples' thoughts on the anti-establishment tone of the video.  Notice the discomfort of the folks sitting to Erica's left (our right) throughout the video (**snicker snicker**).