But the fact that you wrote it well made me read the whole thing. If it had been txtspk from the start I wouldn't have bothered.

Good points, btw.

It's the Luddite argument, and it's as valid today as it was then.

It all depends on what kind of life you want. Work will always be hard because employers will always demand the best value. The important point is, our modern tools enable us to be more productive. It's wrong to view that as a reduction in employment, because there are now so many new jobs which were not dreamed of 200 years ago. How many professional athletes, models and advertising executives were there in 1800 ? These people would have been manual labourers, prostitutes or thieves.

The problem is, when they are learning about specific subjects, like computing, they aren't learning anything useful or practical that will help them in the real world.

We upgraded the servers at work last night and I was the only one over 25 there and the others didn'T have a clue about the practical side of computing, reconnecting a UPS, jury rigging a frame, because it was too small etc.

Likewise, our programmers, they have had training, but they still haven't learnt the basics - how a processor works, how you optimise your code for performance, instead of making it just look pretty...

I like cheeze.

I do think that the focus has changed in society, but I don't have a reasoned argument, so I'll just put forward some of the little things that I recall coming across.

Let's get rid of apostrophes, because no-one knows how to use them.

Let's change the spelling of words so that they are more phonetic because people can't spell.

Let's not worry about spelling, so long as the answer is correct.

I notice that poor English is widely used on TV, especially children's TV. Things such as "These ones" or "Those ones".

As regards education versus skill. I am a mentor for paramedic diploma students. The course takes two years and about half of that will be in the clinical setting, which isn't all that much. This used to be the probationary period for ambulance technicians- after one year a person was a qualified ambulance technician- and now, they have one year of fully-supervised clinical time before being qualified paramedics.

What this means is that they now have full, professional responsibility for patient care whether working alone, or with an ambulance technician and arguably are just as responsible even when working with an experienced paramedic. So, wouldn't you think that the remainder of the time was spent working hard on the clinical skills required so that when all else fails, they have solid training to fall back on? Well, they are wasting (IMHO) time doing essays on communication skills; something that I think you will either have, or won't and will either learn, or won't, but spending time writing essays on it!

They also spend so much time discussing "informed consent" that they are afraid to take a pulse without getting specific permission from a patient. Something that is usually done without the patient noticing- by resting a reassuring hand on the patients wrist- is now a subject for informed consent, FFS!

Regarding computer skills, I did look at doing industry qualifications such as Comp TIA A+ and MCSA, and was told that those people who come out of universities with degrees don't have a clue in the real world. It may or may not be true, but why am I not surprised?

Essays on communication skills are a waste of time. Group work would be far superior. Even better is observation - someone observing your skills. This is what doctors have to undergo as part of their training.

Having said that, I wasted a lot of time on "sociology" and other similar useless (IMO) lectures, whereas other far more important topics were sacrificed.

I don't agree with that. Yes a lot of today's generation may not know how to spell or use grammar correctly but that doesn't mean we should just give up on it.

Want to type more but have to run as a user just called me - boo! Back soon.

Just checking- I got the impression that you thought that those were my proposals. I was just giving some examples of what I had heard of.

I also noticed that I missed out an 'ownership' apostrophe, so I need to read my work properly.

I still like cheeze.

There's millions of people out there who don't know or care that their 'reality TV' shows are more often than not faked, I know that much... Christ, entire lives seem to be faked, like Jordan and Katona etc

And that is before you even mention the fake boobies.