Every adult in Scotland is being offered up to £100 to develop and improve their computer skills.
The funding forms part of a Scottish Executive drive to extend learning.
The Individual Learning Account (ILA) Scotland scheme offers low income learners up to £200 a year for courses to help them get back into work.
This has now been extended to provide funding of up to £100 a year for basic information technology training to everyone in Scotland over 18.
Not very interesting in itself, but it reminded me of an anecdote from a couple of years ago. Not a very interesting one, but I’m going to share it with you all the same - and because you’re bored, I just know you’re gonna read it anyway, interesting or not.
Apparently, a few years ago, the government were pushing a similar initiative to provide basic computer training and ‘certification’. The training was outsourced to local IT training companies. Anyway, one evening, I had a knock on the door. Upon answering I discovered a small man who told me all about this initiative.
"Do you have any IT qualifications?" he asked.
"As it happens, no." I replied. "However as I do a fair amount of database design in my job I’m not sure your services are really my cup of tea."
"So you have no certificates?" he said.
"Er… no," I responded. "but as I implied in my previous statement, my IT skills are such that your services really aren’t for me."
"The government have put this money aside for you," the salesman informed me. "You don’t want to waste that money, do you?"
"No no." I countered. "The government have put this money aside for people who have poor or non-existent IT skills and wish to acquire a piece of paper that that tells the bearer that they are certified to press the ‘on’ button on their computer and perhaps use that minor ‘qualification’ to graduate from working on the shop floor or driving the works van, to working in the office."
"Your chances of getting an IT job are greatly improved with a certificate such as this."
Up until this point, I had attempted to be reasonably amicable and only slightly sarcastic. It was clear from this statement, however, that this irritating little man was determined to miss my point, even if I physically used it to gouge his eyes out. He therefore raised himself in my estimation from minor annoyance to full blown legitimate target for whatever mockery, scorn or derision I felt necessary to belittle him and make him go away with his tail between his legs.
"Little man," I began (for he was very short), "I don’t consider myself to be a computer expert, but clearly my understanding of both computers and the world we live in eclipses yours in a way that can only be described as … and I choose my words carefully here… ‘total’." In case he continued to miss the point, I drove it in further. "At my advanced level of society - which, it is painfully obvious to me is far, far higher than yours given that I have a comfortable yet challenging and financially rewarding office job and you are traipsing around, desperately knocking on doors in the rain on a Wednesday evening – any attempt to quote some scrappy government funded numpty’s guide to what is laughingly called ‘Information Technology’ would be ridiculed beyond measure."
He left shortly after I finished talking.
Actually, I may have recalled the incident with more malice than it actually had. I’m generally not that mean to people in person. But rest assured, that I was very, very sarcastic.
I should point out, however, that I had no intention to belittle what is actually a very worthy scheme. I was simply being mean to the salesman on my doorstep as is my fundamental human right!
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