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> and the source material isn't very good at explaining programming languages to non-programmers who teach How can you explain something to someone if they hav

> and the source material isn't very good at explaining programming languages to non-programmers who teach How can you explain something to someone if they have no knowledge about it? It doesn't matter how smart your wife is, this is an impossible task unless you actually learn the thing. It would be like asking someone who doesn't know calculus to create a lesson plan to teach calculus. When you put it like that it sounds pretty ridiculous. That school is definitely lucky that you helped out, but I don't think the root issue is the source material.

albertgoeswoof 6y ago
This is how a lot of teaching works- the teachers often have knowledge marginally above the level of the class they’re teaching, and are teaching out a book/syllabus with no flexibility It doesn’t work for programming because most people haven’t studied it tor years at school (unlike maths, literature, etc.), so can’t help solve the problems that crop up under the hood so often.
- skissane 6y ago
  > This is how a lot of teaching works- the teachers often have knowledge marginally above the level of the class they’re teaching, and are teaching out a book/syllabus with no flexibility In high school, our computing textbook contained blatant errors. I tried to explain this to the teachers, but soon realised they didn't know anything about the subject at all, they were just repeating the textbook without understanding it. (Example: our textbook falsely claimed TCP/IP used parity bits as an error detection mechanism. No, it uses ones' complement checksums. I referred to RFCs 791 and 793. The teacher had no idea what an RFC was.)
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  Yes I know, and I think it's an extremely poor method. My younger siblings have atrocious fundamental math skills because teachers don't understand the fundamentals themselves.
  - cutler 6y ago
    My 1970s grammar school teachers in a typical northern working class town knew their subject inside out and could take an able student all the way to Oxford or Cambridge. In the 80s new directives increased teachers' admin workload killing extra-curricular activities such as our prize-winning chess team. That's the UK education system for you.
hnlmorg 6y ago
> How can you explain something to someone if they have no knowledge about it? That's generally the point of an explanation: to impart knowledge to someone who didn't previously have it. :) > It doesn't matter how smart your wife is, this is an impossible task unless you actually learn the thing. She doesn't need to train as a software developer to teach the basics of programming languages. She just needs to understand the basic blocks she's going to teach herself. In my case, I taught her what a variable is and how strings and integers are different types of variable. Then I taught how how to right a while loop, comparisons and print to the screen. From there she was able to teach the kids to write a simple "higher or lower" computer game. This is all stuff her source material should have covered but didn't.

albertgoeswoof 6y ago

This is how a lot of teaching works- the teachers often have knowledge marginally above the level of the class they’re teaching, and are teaching out a book/syllabus with no flexibility It doesn’t work for programming because most people haven’t studied it tor years at school (unlike maths, literature, etc.), so can’t help solve the problems that crop up under the hood so often.

skissane 6y ago
> This is how a lot of teaching works- the teachers often have knowledge marginally above the level of the class they’re teaching, and are teaching out a book/syllabus with no flexibility In high school, our computing textbook contained blatant errors. I tried to explain this to the teachers, but soon realised they didn't know anything about the subject at all, they were just repeating the textbook without understanding it. (Example: our textbook falsely claimed TCP/IP used parity bits as an error detection mechanism. No, it uses ones' complement checksums. I referred to RFCs 791 and 793. The teacher had no idea what an RFC was.)
ZephyrBlu 6y ago
Yes I know, and I think it's an extremely poor method. My younger siblings have atrocious fundamental math skills because teachers don't understand the fundamentals themselves.
- cutler 6y ago
  My 1970s grammar school teachers in a typical northern working class town knew their subject inside out and could take an able student all the way to Oxford or Cambridge. In the 80s new directives increased teachers' admin workload killing extra-curricular activities such as our prize-winning chess team. That's the UK education system for you.

hnlmorg 6y ago

> How can you explain something to someone if they have no knowledge about it? That's generally the point of an explanation: to impart knowledge to someone who didn't previously have it. :) > It doesn't matter how smart your wife is, this is an impossible task unless you actually learn the thing. She doesn't need to train as a software developer to teach the basics of programming languages. She just needs to understand the basic blocks she's going to teach herself. In my case, I taught her what a variable is and how strings and integers are different types of variable. Then I taught how how to right a while loop, comparisons and print to the screen. From there she was able to teach the kids to write a simple "higher or lower" computer game. This is all stuff her source material should have covered but didn't.