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Maybe I'm biased but I wish Computer Science was more of an integral standard of education instead of an afterthought. With all this discussion about Common Co

Maybe I'm biased but I wish Computer Science was more of an integral standard of education instead of an afterthought. With all this discussion about Common Core, we're still at the point in my state where MAYBE a Computer Science can be applied to the Math credit requirement for graduation. I just feel like so many schools view it as an optional afterthought. Source: Physics teacher who has been begging his administration to add this course. Right now I have over 40 kids who meet after school to learn programming and scripting, but can't find it to be added as part of the official offerings.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Computer science is highly interdisciplinary and syncretic and as such cannot be neatly fit into a first-order subject without diluting it or investing in lots of prerequisite instruction, which for the purposes of a compulsory schooling system is next to intractable. "Programming and scripting" classes are a different matter altogether with highly dubious benefits beyond far-fetched theorizing by its overly optimistic proponents. Too much faith is put on compulsory schooling. Everything must be coordinated and planned. The very idea that one might acquire programming as a means to a pursued end later in life appears to be anathema to many people, who instead advocate that a ritualistic drilling of how to write lines of ALGOL will mystically make people "technically literate" and appreciative.
kickscondor 11y ago
I teach computers and technology (basically stuff like Arduino, Twine, Scratch and so on) at an elementary school. Obviously my experience is just my experience - yours might be different - but there seems to be a fervor right now for applying technology at every level of education. To me - the problem is not enough programmers willing to come into teaching. Programmers just want to be in startups right now.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > To me - the problem is not enough programmers willing to come into teaching. Its not really surprising, considering that programmers can make significantly more (even before considering the lure of the potential upside of equity) in the private sector (startup or not) -- or even as programmers in the public sector -- than they could hope to teaching, and without paying for the additional required certification and credentialing requirements to get into teaching.
  - douche 11y ago
    You've also got the almighty gender disparity problem again, in reverse. Teaching and programming have almost mirror-opposite gender splits[1][2]. Without going into the debate about the programming gender disparity and lighting that fire, if you've got very few teachers from the subset of the population that for whatever reason correlates with computer programming, you're likely to end up with very few school teachers that are interested enough or qualified to teach it. I thank my stars that my high-school chemistry teacher had sons that grew up in the Apple II era to be computer programmers and that she thought it was important enough to teach an elective in it. [1]http://www.aaeteachers.org/index.php/blog/757-the-teacher-gender-gap http://www.aaeteachers.org/index.php/blog/757-the-teacher-ge... [2]http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/it-gender-gap-where-are-the-female-programmers/ http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/it-gender...
- cwbrandsma 11y ago
  Age might be a factor. When I was in my 20's I had no real interest in teaching kids. No I'm older, with highschool age kids myself, now I have some interest in it (I am teaching 2 of my kids to program myself). But I'm not sure I would want to teach a real class either. Computer Science is very hit-or-miss. Seems bad to force a kid to complete a class when they have no aptitude for it. Final side note: I help run Boise Code Camp, which is held once a year around spring break. As part of that we devote one room just to kid topics (grade school-middle-school). That room accounts for over 10% of our attendance.
  - pinn4242 11y ago
    Perhaps you don't have the aptitude to teach that particular kid? It's harder to look inwards, though.
  - jerf 11y ago
    This prompts the thought that we ought to reserve a few days at the end of a school year for kids to try out computer programming. Then I realized that would be awesome for all the electives and got sort of excited. Then I remembered that any real change in the school system is effectively impossible and I got sad again. (Would we still have shop classes if students had a chance to try it out first?)
    - aaronem 11y ago
      No, we'd still have shop classes if we still saw a need for lots of factory workers. What we have instead is a school system that's designed from the ground up for turning out lots of factory workers (and farmers, clerks, and homemakers) trying to keep up with the times, and failing. ETA: On reflection I suspect many here won't see it that way. It's worth pointing out that, even in the public system, there are different schools, and different subjects, for kids whom the system identifies as "smart", than for those whom it does not. The former will generally have ample opportunities to learn about computers and programming whether it's officially sanctioned or not, and indeed will probably do so more successfully if it isn't, because being required to do it makes it feel less like fun. The latter will have to learn that kind of thing on their own, if they're inclined to it, because the system isn't going to trouble itself, the attitude being that anything more complicated than making change and operating a point-of-sale system is almost certain to be wasted on them anyway, and trying to impart complexities to them will only leave them bored and frustrated anyway. (This is in fact true, in a superficial sense, but it has nothing to do with their ability to cope with complexity, and everything to do with the way it'd be put to them. See also: the utter, abject incompetence with which almost all high-school-level mathematics is taught.) It works this way because it was explicitly designed to work this way by people who genuinely believed in the progressive utopia, where in exchange for there being a specific and fitting place for everyone, everyone was trimmed and pared down to fit a specific place. (See also: Aldous Huxley. Why do you think he went to the trouble of writing a book-length satire of this kind of thinking? Just for the hell of it?) Unfortunately, their design was fundamentally flawed, and they therefore bequeathed to us a system which cannot possibly bear up under its own weight. Fortunately, their design was fundamentally flawed, so the system they inflicted upon us will inevitably collapse and make way for something new which might turn out to be better, not least because it could hardly be worse.
- cobaltblue 11y ago
  I'm a single young male, it can easily raise eyebrows if I ever exhibit interest in being around young children. As another commenter mentioned though, maybe as an aspect of my youth, I don't even like children in general to begin with. Second, I have no idea how to teach someone that doesn't really want to learn and teach themselves -- I'll help anyone of any age who comes to me for help or guidance, but anything with groups where only 1/3 of them are paying full attention at any given time isn't for me. I can tell them all to work through Learn Python the Hard Way and help any individuals struggling, but they could just do that at home and get help on the internet or by live-chatting me/anyone else. I could give them all the work to make an LED blink on an embedded system, and a few of them might extend that to something more interesting, but that doesn't sound like something lasting. Lastly, I'm prone to explaining concepts in unconventional ways (as opposed to just repeating the textbook) which doesn't fit very well with a standardized curriculum that I'd need to be certified for to teach anything "serious" in a school setting as opposed to a random volunteer code camp.
  - kickscondor 11y ago
    I really appreciate this comment - you raise a bunch of good points. Your comments about children, though, are a perspective thing on your part - yes, society is very protective of kids and, yes, children are overly self-centered and (basically) insane... But actually - the opposite is also true. In general, communities want men participating in kids' lives. You do have to build a little trust - but IMHO time well spent. And (elementary age) kids are also the best kind of people - usually they're not shouting, yelling and bawling - most of the time they are genuinely lovely people. Now this is a generalization - and it varies from place to place - and my school is only half comprised of lower-income kids - but yeah - kids this age are at an age of wonder and discovery. Teaching is just programming a child's mind. I wish more programmers had an appreciation for that. I would venture to say that computers are MORE stubborn than children. :)
- angdis 11y ago
  I think that more STEM folks _would_ be interested in teaching, especially those who are late in their careers. The problem is that the prospect of teaching high school is horrifying to someone that isn't prepared to deal with the discipline and safety issues that beset high schools today.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

Computer science is highly interdisciplinary and syncretic and as such cannot be neatly fit into a first-order subject without diluting it or investing in lots of prerequisite instruction, which for the purposes of a compulsory schooling system is next to intractable. "Programming and scripting" classes are a different matter altogether with highly dubious benefits beyond far-fetched theorizing by its overly optimistic proponents. Too much faith is put on compulsory schooling. Everything must be coordinated and planned. The very idea that one might acquire programming as a means to a pursued end later in life appears to be anathema to many people, who instead advocate that a ritualistic drilling of how to write lines of ALGOL will mystically make people "technically literate" and appreciative.

kickscondor 11y ago

I teach computers and technology (basically stuff like Arduino, Twine, Scratch and so on) at an elementary school. Obviously my experience is just my experience - yours might be different - but there seems to be a fervor right now for applying technology at every level of education. To me - the problem is not enough programmers willing to come into teaching. Programmers just want to be in startups right now.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> To me - the problem is not enough programmers willing to come into teaching. Its not really surprising, considering that programmers can make significantly more (even before considering the lure of the potential upside of equity) in the private sector (startup or not) -- or even as programmers in the public sector -- than they could hope to teaching, and without paying for the additional required certification and credentialing requirements to get into teaching.
- douche 11y ago
  You've also got the almighty gender disparity problem again, in reverse. Teaching and programming have almost mirror-opposite gender splits[1][2]. Without going into the debate about the programming gender disparity and lighting that fire, if you've got very few teachers from the subset of the population that for whatever reason correlates with computer programming, you're likely to end up with very few school teachers that are interested enough or qualified to teach it. I thank my stars that my high-school chemistry teacher had sons that grew up in the Apple II era to be computer programmers and that she thought it was important enough to teach an elective in it. [1]http://www.aaeteachers.org/index.php/blog/757-the-teacher-gender-gap http://www.aaeteachers.org/index.php/blog/757-the-teacher-ge... [2]http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/it-gender-gap-where-are-the-female-programmers/ http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/it-gender...
cwbrandsma 11y ago
Age might be a factor. When I was in my 20's I had no real interest in teaching kids. No I'm older, with highschool age kids myself, now I have some interest in it (I am teaching 2 of my kids to program myself). But I'm not sure I would want to teach a real class either. Computer Science is very hit-or-miss. Seems bad to force a kid to complete a class when they have no aptitude for it. Final side note: I help run Boise Code Camp, which is held once a year around spring break. As part of that we devote one room just to kid topics (grade school-middle-school). That room accounts for over 10% of our attendance.
- pinn4242 11y ago
  Perhaps you don't have the aptitude to teach that particular kid? It's harder to look inwards, though.
- jerf 11y ago
  This prompts the thought that we ought to reserve a few days at the end of a school year for kids to try out computer programming. Then I realized that would be awesome for all the electives and got sort of excited. Then I remembered that any real change in the school system is effectively impossible and I got sad again. (Would we still have shop classes if students had a chance to try it out first?)
  - aaronem 11y ago
    No, we'd still have shop classes if we still saw a need for lots of factory workers. What we have instead is a school system that's designed from the ground up for turning out lots of factory workers (and farmers, clerks, and homemakers) trying to keep up with the times, and failing. ETA: On reflection I suspect many here won't see it that way. It's worth pointing out that, even in the public system, there are different schools, and different subjects, for kids whom the system identifies as "smart", than for those whom it does not. The former will generally have ample opportunities to learn about computers and programming whether it's officially sanctioned or not, and indeed will probably do so more successfully if it isn't, because being required to do it makes it feel less like fun. The latter will have to learn that kind of thing on their own, if they're inclined to it, because the system isn't going to trouble itself, the attitude being that anything more complicated than making change and operating a point-of-sale system is almost certain to be wasted on them anyway, and trying to impart complexities to them will only leave them bored and frustrated anyway. (This is in fact true, in a superficial sense, but it has nothing to do with their ability to cope with complexity, and everything to do with the way it'd be put to them. See also: the utter, abject incompetence with which almost all high-school-level mathematics is taught.) It works this way because it was explicitly designed to work this way by people who genuinely believed in the progressive utopia, where in exchange for there being a specific and fitting place for everyone, everyone was trimmed and pared down to fit a specific place. (See also: Aldous Huxley. Why do you think he went to the trouble of writing a book-length satire of this kind of thinking? Just for the hell of it?) Unfortunately, their design was fundamentally flawed, and they therefore bequeathed to us a system which cannot possibly bear up under its own weight. Fortunately, their design was fundamentally flawed, so the system they inflicted upon us will inevitably collapse and make way for something new which might turn out to be better, not least because it could hardly be worse.
cobaltblue 11y ago
I'm a single young male, it can easily raise eyebrows if I ever exhibit interest in being around young children. As another commenter mentioned though, maybe as an aspect of my youth, I don't even like children in general to begin with. Second, I have no idea how to teach someone that doesn't really want to learn and teach themselves -- I'll help anyone of any age who comes to me for help or guidance, but anything with groups where only 1/3 of them are paying full attention at any given time isn't for me. I can tell them all to work through Learn Python the Hard Way and help any individuals struggling, but they could just do that at home and get help on the internet or by live-chatting me/anyone else. I could give them all the work to make an LED blink on an embedded system, and a few of them might extend that to something more interesting, but that doesn't sound like something lasting. Lastly, I'm prone to explaining concepts in unconventional ways (as opposed to just repeating the textbook) which doesn't fit very well with a standardized curriculum that I'd need to be certified for to teach anything "serious" in a school setting as opposed to a random volunteer code camp.
- kickscondor 11y ago
  I really appreciate this comment - you raise a bunch of good points. Your comments about children, though, are a perspective thing on your part - yes, society is very protective of kids and, yes, children are overly self-centered and (basically) insane... But actually - the opposite is also true. In general, communities want men participating in kids' lives. You do have to build a little trust - but IMHO time well spent. And (elementary age) kids are also the best kind of people - usually they're not shouting, yelling and bawling - most of the time they are genuinely lovely people. Now this is a generalization - and it varies from place to place - and my school is only half comprised of lower-income kids - but yeah - kids this age are at an age of wonder and discovery. Teaching is just programming a child's mind. I wish more programmers had an appreciation for that. I would venture to say that computers are MORE stubborn than children. :)
angdis 11y ago
I think that more STEM folks _would_ be interested in teaching, especially those who are late in their careers. The problem is that the prospect of teaching high school is horrifying to someone that isn't prepared to deal with the discipline and safety issues that beset high schools today.