Comments on: Ability https://www.isegoria.net/2010/04/ability/ From the ancient Greek for equality in freedom of speech; an eclectic mix of thoughts, large and small Fri, 01 May 2026 21:33:15 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6.1 By: Isegoria https://www.isegoria.net/2010/04/ability/comment-page-1/#comment-658 Isegoria Fri, 23 Apr 2010 22:19:09 +0000 http://www.isegoria.net/?p=5445#comment-658 Excellent point, David. In fact, I cited your piece on Hammer’s recommended education for business a few years ago.

]]> By: David Foster https://www.isegoria.net/2010/04/ability/comment-page-1/#comment-657 David Foster Fri, 23 Apr 2010 21:22:04 +0000 http://www.isegoria.net/?p=5445#comment-657 Michael Hammer, the noted management consultant, argued that in order to develop the kind of thinking skills required for a senior executive one should pursue two kinds of education:

1) A difficult technical subject: computer science is specifically mentioned under this category
2) A traditional liberal-arts course of study

If Dr Hammer was right, and if it’s really true that a very high % of people cannot learn to program, then it’s automatically true that a very high % of people cannot learn to think, at least in the sense Hammer was talking about.

However, I believe that Dartmouth College, in the 1960s and 1970s, took advantage of its then-new timesharing system to require all undergraduates to learn to program.

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