Sure, education can and should be improved. I'm not sure about the "skills we need 10 years from now;" that sounds good but seems like a different issue. The type of knowledge and thinking skills required to be a "rightly informed citizen" or whatever you want to call it are really not much different from Socrates' or before. However, educating the masses is no simple task. As for skills 10 years from now .. how about we aim for the fundamentals first then worry about the other stuff. This reminds of a similar discussion we've had on HN about everyone needing to learn to program and that programming knowledge provides critical thinking skills that will, if everyone was a programmer, allow there to be peace and harmony in the state or something. I don't know if you are going down that road so I don't want to beat it up here but having, simply, programming skills does not necessarily make one better at thinking about philosophical or political issues. There are plenty of programmers that think the Tea Party makes sense.
I think even this reasonwell stuff shows where programmers can tend to treat problems simplistically and try to use ideas and concepts currently in vogue in programming culture (social networking, upvotes, etc) to solve political debates.
Anyway, as far as people needing to better equipped, intellectually, in a democracy, I agree but I don't know how you get there; I don't think the solution is in slight changes to the curriculum, I certainly don't think the idea that is currently in vogue on HN, to dump college, is going to get you there (where "there" is greater than 95% if the populace discussing issues with philosophical rigor).
I think even this reasonwell stuff shows where programmers can tend to treat problems simplistically and try to use ideas and concepts currently in vogue in programming culture (social networking, upvotes, etc) to solve political debates.
Anyway, as far as people needing to better equipped, intellectually, in a democracy, I agree but I don't know how you get there; I don't think the solution is in slight changes to the curriculum, I certainly don't think the idea that is currently in vogue on HN, to dump college, is going to get you there (where "there" is greater than 95% if the populace discussing issues with philosophical rigor).
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