Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, condemns British education system

The chairman of Google has delivered a devastating critique of the UK's education system and said the country had failed to capitalise on its record of innovation in science and engineering.

Delivering the annual MacTaggart lecture in Edinburgh, Eric Schmidt criticised "a drift to the humanities" and attacked the emergence of two educational camps, each of which "denigrate the other. To use what I'm told is the local vernacular, you're either a luvvy or a boffin," he said.

Schmidt also hit out at Lord Sugar, the Labour peer and star of the hit BBC programme The Apprentice, who recently claimed on the show that "engineers are no good at business".

Schmidt told the MediaGuardian Edinburgh international TV festival: "Over the past century, the UK has stopped nurturing its polymaths. You need to bring art and science back together."

The technology veteran, who joined Google a decade ago to help founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin build the company, said Britain should look to the "glory days" of the Victorian era for reminders of how the two disciplines can work together.

"It was a time when the same people wrote poetry and built bridges," he said. "Lewis Carroll didn't just write one of the classic fairytales of all time. He was also a mathematics tutor at Oxford. James Clerk Maxwell was described by Einstein as among the best physicists since Newton – but was also a published poet."

Schmidt's comments echoed sentiments expressed by Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, who revealed this week that he was stepping down. "The Macintosh turned out so well because the people working on it were musicians, artists, poets and historians – who also happened to be excellent computer scientists," Jobs once told the New York Times.

Schmidt paid tribute to Britain's record of innovation, saying the UK had "invented computers in both concept and practice" before highlighting that the world's first office computer "was built in 1951 by the Lyons chain of teashops".

However, he said the UK had failed to build industry-leading positions or successfully transfer ideas from the drawing board to the boardroom.

"The UK is the home of so many media-related inventions. You invented photography. You invented TV," he said. "Yet today, none of the world's leading exponents in these fields are from the UK." He added: "Thank you for your innovation, thank you for your brilliant ideas. You're not taking advantage of them on a global scale."

He said British startups tended to sell out to overseas companies once they had reached a certain size, and that this trend needed to be reversed. "The UK does a great job of backing small firms and cottage industries, but there's little point getting a thousand seeds to sprout if they are then left to wither or transplanted overseas. UK businesses need championing to help them grow into global powerhouses, without having to sell out to foreign-owned companies. If you don't address this, then the UK will continue to be where inventions are born, but not bred for long-term success."

Schmidt said the country that invented the computer was "throwing away your great computer heritage" by failing to teach programming in schools. "I was flabbergasted to learn that today computer science isn't even taught as standard in UK schools," he said. "Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it's made."

Barack Obama announced in June that the US would train an extra 10,000 engineers a year. "I hope that others will follow suit – the world needs more engineers. I saw the other day that on The Apprentice Alan Sugar said engineers are no good at business," he said.

"If the UK's creative businesses want to thrive in the digital future, you need people who understand all facets of it integrated from the very beginning. Take a lead from the Victorians and ignore Lord Sugar: bring engineers into your company at all levels, including the top."

Schmidt also announced that Google TV, which allows users to search the internet on their TV sets, would be launched in Europe early next year, with the UK "among the top priorities". The product is already available in America, although sales have been disappointing.

Schmidt said Google TV did not threaten broadcasters and would enable them to experiment with new formats online. He defended the company's contribution to the TV industry, pointing out that it had invested billions of dollars in IT infrastructure that media companies use.

Google also announced it would fund a new course in online production and distribution at the National Film & Television School in London for three years.

Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/26/eric-schmidt-chairman-google-education