what kinds of projects would you propose for kids who want to be lawyers? doctors? hairstylists? law enforcement? military? basically anything except for engineering?
Briefs
> doctors?
Treatment plans
> hairstylists?
Haircuts
> law enforcement?
Investigative reports. Martial arts performances/fights. Volunteering.
> military?
Strategy/tactical reports. Meeting fitness goals. Engineering projects. Volunteering at soup kitchens. Running logistical missions.
> basically anything except for engineering?
What the heck do you think the rest of the world is doing all day? Everyone does projects. Work is work.
How would the HN crowd react to that? probably not nearly as favorably as to Woz saying that hacker-like projects should be the marks of success in school. But one could argue that those skills (persuasion, fund-raising, crowd psychology) are important for success in life as well.
The point I'm trying to make is that this project-centric view of success is very biased towards hackers, and it's an oversimplification to believe that most of the population would also find this appealing.
I certainly think that trying to teach, practice, and test fund-raising, public speaking, etc. each as separate skills would not be a good way to train effective leaders or politicians. But if you teach a bit about each of the skills and then have someone apply all of them to a specific project/campaign/endeavor, they'll learn more and actually accomplish something along the way. (BTW, Evidence of this is very easy to find, because effective leadership always requires you to be exercising multiple skills simultaneously.)
You wouldn't teach someone to play violin by spending a month on reading music, a month on bowing, and a month on fingering, and then expect them to be able to easily transition on their own to actual performing.
Similarly, it isn't a good idea to structure a curriculum to have separate classes on data structures, assembly language, object oriented programming, networking, GUIs, etc., and then expect somebody having taken all those classes to be able to build a useful application. (Nor can you simply wait until a "senior project" to start tying things together.)
There's really very little about that insight that's hacker-specific.
The important thing is that you've created something unique that you can keep.
I think the point I was (not so eloquently) trying to convey in my parent post was that hackers value 'creating something unique that they can keep' more than most people in the population, and since woz is the ultimate hacker, it makes sense that he's pushing for this sort of project-based education. I don't have any good examples off the top of my head, but you could imagine other cultures or even personality types within your own culture where people place value on something other than projects that they can hack on and show off to the world on github.