SK> I wouldn't be surprised if that came up fairly often. Students in to
SK> schools are allowed to get by with a fair amount of calculator use, 
SK> today's calculators can do many of these operations like magic, with
SK> the student understanding or learning a darn thing!
 
oooohhhh so true, I never minded the use of calculators and such in 
school as long as the kids first learned the logic and the reasoning 
skills.  What irked me as a parent was the text book that showed them 
what buttons to push to get a desired result from the calculator! 
 
SK> What I would want to counter with (if a business person lodged such 
SK> complaint with me) was whether they had checked the students high sc
SK> transcripts. If the kid had all "As" in math and still couldn't do t
SK> operations, then the guy has a valid complaint. But if the kid had p
SK> grades in math and this guy hired him anyhow (with or without checki
SK> his transcripts), well, that wasn't too smart now, was it?
 
Bingo!  I'm not sure (and short of tracking down the business person, 
I'll never know) Given the response, I would hope it was the former 
(for the sake of the validity of the survey) but it could easily be the 
latter--and I do think that that is a problem as well.  If you select 
someone who you know is deficient in a particular area, do not turn 
around and make an issue of it as you had a choice to hire/not hire.
 
I just received (yesterday) the study "A Business Leader's Guide to 
Setting Academic Standards" by The Business Roundtable. (you had posted 
a message talking about it earlier) It's a short, slick presentation 
and after I go over it I'll present my comments to bounce around with 
others who may have requested a copy of the same report.
 
Dale
--- TriDog 10.0
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