My folks and I took the kids to the fancy new playground at their local elementary school. My parents’ town is flush in cash with all the tax money coming in from the million dollar condos. Jonah and Ian climbed on a spider web structure with a soft, space-age base. Dad marveled at the new take on the old jungle gym and the bouncy base. "When I was a kid, we had nothing but gravel under our jungle gyms."
Mom and Ian ran off to try other equipment, and Dad and I stood by watching Jonah hang from his legs from the spider web. Jonah told my dad about his plans for the week. "And then Dylan and me are going to set up our own Olympics."
"Dylan and I." I mumbled.
Dad said, "Why bother. Nobody is going to use grammar in the future. Some things are even sounding weird to me. Who says ‘It is I? anymore’"
Two PhDs watched the kid hang from his legs above us.
I told him that my babysitter can text while she’s asleep. He was impressed with that.
There’s been much discussion on the blog about the irrelevance of a traditional education. And I’m not sure how I should feel about it.
Apt. 11d 
I remember my first year in college (1991-2), trying to decide on a major. Considering “English” or “Philosophy” or maybe some sort of “Science.” And then, I was talking to a few high school friends, who were going into computer science or networking or whatever, and I remember thinking:
“Hey, I was a big nerd! I got A’s in my honors classes! How come you know all this stuff about computers and I don’t?” And they’d just shrug and say they picked it up on their own over the years. And I felt like I missed the boat. There was this entire field of “Computer Science” that I was completely unprepared for. (“Computers” class in school involved learned how to use Word Star, and some spread sheet program.)
I had an excellent education, but it simply failed to include anything that would give me even a first step towards knowing even what sorts of jobs there WERE in computers.
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Joanne Jacobs has a post up entitled “Majoring in Turfgrass Science.” Here’s the final paragraph:
“They say all our jobs were going to change a half-dozen times in a working lifetime. My old job as a newspaper journalist is vanishing, but I have the skills I learned as an English and Creative Writing major to sustain me. Also, I married an electrical engineer, something I recommend to all English majors.”
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Many computer people, especially non-programmers (like break & fix or networking people) pick it up in non-academic settings. I’ve often wondered if this is why the women in technology skew towards the development side, or usability: those are topics that are taught at school. The girls are not getting invited over to watch somebody’s big brother dissect his new PC in the basement.
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