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1) IMO, a teacher's first priority ought to be to satisfying their students' goals. So, what is the actual goal of these young people in coming to you? Are thes

1) IMO, a teacher's first priority ought to be to satisfying their students' goals. So, what is the actual goal of these young people in coming to you? Are these people planning to pursue an actual academic and theoretical path, or do they want to become working professional programmers? You mentioned a village, so I wonder if they might just generally be a bunch of young people from poor backgrounds wanting to prioritize leveling up in life, not necessarily learning the details of CS theory. As interesting as functional programming might be to some of them, many of these people might just want to get their foot in the door somewhere with some entry-level Java job. 2) What is these peoples' experience level with programming and computers? You're listing a lot of good things, but you might end up going into too dense of detail for some beginners and scare them away with too theoretical of a discussion too quickly before they get their feet wet with some basic problem solving.

atomicnature 4y ago
> a teacher's first priority ought to be to satisfying their students' goals I'd like to challenge this assertion. I'd argue that the teacher's goal is to improve the goals students come up with, sometimes even helping them abandon unproductive goals & pick more appropriate goals. For example, if you let students choose for themselves what sort of mathematics they want to do, I am pretty sure that they're going to pick easy problems (in general; there will be some exceptions). Hence, the teacher's task is to expand the vision for the student, to help them target bigger problems, more difficult ones and to expand their capabilities beyond what they envisioned for themselves. If a teacher cannot challenge the student to envision something bigger for themselves and the world, in my worldview, the teacher hasn't done a good job.
- logicalmonster 4y ago
  Aren't you approaching this thinking from a likely (far) wealthier perspective? There's people in very bad living conditions trying to learn computers to dramatically improve a shitty life. I'm not saying learning computer science theory isn't great, but the details of these potential students lives should be considered and are important for what their goal in trying to learn. Would you go and tell a student this? ------------------------- I'm sorry you have heaps of rats and cockroaches crawling in your shack my student. I'm sorry you don't have working electricity. I'm sorry your brother is sick because he can't afford extra medical treatments he needs to fix his condition. What's that? Your main goal is to start out on an entry-level Java job so you can help your family and want to be guided on the right path for that? Oh, no. No, no, no. That's NOT appropriate. We need to teach you computer science theory first. If your life spirals out of control in the meantime, at least you'll know it was for an appropriate cause.
  - atomicnature 4y ago
    First of all, I myself come from a non affluent background, and the students I'm working with are also from a pretty economially/socially disadvantaged background. The factor doesn't change the teacher's job. The teacher's job is, if you're in grade 5, to take you to grade 6. Sometimes you as a student may dislike the process, since it involves learning stuff you think is not useful, but the teacher ought to know what's profitable to learn. The teacher is in a better position to take the student out of the poverty, than the student themselves. If they don't know what the student needs to learn, then the teacher fails the student. That's my point. Essentially, the teacher's job is not to bend to student requests on what stuff they're to learn. If the teacher is there to "satisfy" the student's goals alone, then there's no hope for civilisation or for the students themselves.
    - logicalmonster 4y ago
      If OP were asking about a public school role, I'd say that your reasoning would be a little more understandable. Maybe we can agree to disagree, but I think considering the needs of the students to be more important from this description. It seems like the students are coming to him outside of their normal school time to try and learn. So they might have a specific goal that makes sense for them. And I don't know these students life details, but since OP mentioned village, it's conceivable their current biggest problem in life is why they're there in the first place: learning enough practical stuff to get a job. I love computer science stuff too, but that can't matter as much to me if I was starving and insecure in my life.
      - atomicnature 4y ago
        > If OP were asking about a public school role, I'd say that your reasoning would be a little more understandable. A teacher is a teacher, whether in public school role, or your local swimming coach or gym trainer. The job of a teacher is to expand your capabilities, to help you see a more capable you and help you get there, one step at a time. The major hurdle is that humans (regardless of economic background) have "bad brains" and many times the learners have horrible expectations about what education is meant to be. There is an effort to build an image for education as a comfortable journey. That's a dangerous image for civilization, and for people of all economic classes. Education is the great equaliser. Remember, when euclid said "There is no royal road to geometry", it was to an emperor! The emperor had his own goals ("royal road to learning"), but such a thing doesn't exist, whether in public schools, or physical exercise, or any other capability such as music/painting. A real teacher will remove the misconception (like Euclid did with the emperor). False salesmen will "teach" you geometry in 3 easy steps :)
eimrine 4y ago
> So, what is the actual goal of these young people in coming to you? I used to have a talk with some kids, their parents and school teachers in our village. All of them use to complain about bad quality of CS teaching in our area. Their goals are different in details but in general they want just to become closer to computers somehow. Somebody wants to get an entry-level job, typically in gamedev field. Somebody wants to improve their electronic toys by programming a microcontroller. Somebody wants to became a musician or a graphical artist and they realize that ability just to play an instrument is not enough nowadays for a musician. Few students have a great reading (therefore researching) skills, their ability to learn anything and everything is not utilized fully by a school program. > Are these people planning to pursue an actual academic and theoretical path, or do they want to become working professional programmers? Most of them have not finished elementary school (in our country this is 12 years of learning starting from 7 y.o.) so a question of finding a work is not going to be a highest priority. One guy is expelled from university and he is going to try again getting a formal education this autumn. So, finishing my classes does not guarantee a student to find a work at all, because of age, but at least I can guarantee a good time spending, filled with discussing of valuable things limited to only CS/STEM areas. To tell the truth, I do not have a defined sequence of the whole classes, I have only a plan of the first 1-hour lecture and aim to gather a feedback questions for the sake of building the second one. Also I have no formed group, just I have promised to a few youngsters to improve their CS skills if they manage to gather in a big group for the sake of respect to my time resources. > What is these peoples' experience level with programming and computers? At least everybody is able to install TikTok on his device with no help. One girl speaks English better than me (a foreign language to all of us). Few boys have some skills with electronics, like repairing MicroUSB in smartphone or playing with Arduino without changing a flash or schematic. One really young boy used to write programs on some smartphone application using graphical programming approach. But most of them, of course, are not very shiny. I do not want to just filter those weak students because almost certainly they will work with computers somehow, and at least they should be familiar with keyboard (our schools do not insist on touchtyping or learning hotkeys or even get familiar with any GUI). But definitely I am willing to work more with talented students because obviously this is a way to spend my time with greater outcome. > You mentioned a village Please stop considering living in a rural place as a bad life. Yes, most of our citizens earns less than $500 monthly, but we have an access to a lot of treasures: free and fresh water everywhere (both in wells and water pipes, because of no pollutions into our local river), organic meats and vegs (because everyone uses to have a farm and advanced families use to have a cattle), clean air everywhere, almost no criminality (because everybody knows everybody), real nature (beautiful forests with no dangerous predators), no noise/light pollutions. Our children use to go to school on foot and no car is required for that. Cockroaches are not a common problem in our households. I have not ever seen any house without electricity except of simple dachas which are not supposed for spending nights. Last but not least, if my student will find any entry-level IT job because of my help I consider this as a great success and maybe a sign to keep improving in a teachership.

atomicnature 4y ago

> a teacher's first priority ought to be to satisfying their students' goals I'd like to challenge this assertion. I'd argue that the teacher's goal is to improve the goals students come up with, sometimes even helping them abandon unproductive goals & pick more appropriate goals. For example, if you let students choose for themselves what sort of mathematics they want to do, I am pretty sure that they're going to pick easy problems (in general; there will be some exceptions). Hence, the teacher's task is to expand the vision for the student, to help them target bigger problems, more difficult ones and to expand their capabilities beyond what they envisioned for themselves. If a teacher cannot challenge the student to envision something bigger for themselves and the world, in my worldview, the teacher hasn't done a good job.

logicalmonster 4y ago
Aren't you approaching this thinking from a likely (far) wealthier perspective? There's people in very bad living conditions trying to learn computers to dramatically improve a shitty life. I'm not saying learning computer science theory isn't great, but the details of these potential students lives should be considered and are important for what their goal in trying to learn. Would you go and tell a student this? ------------------------- I'm sorry you have heaps of rats and cockroaches crawling in your shack my student. I'm sorry you don't have working electricity. I'm sorry your brother is sick because he can't afford extra medical treatments he needs to fix his condition. What's that? Your main goal is to start out on an entry-level Java job so you can help your family and want to be guided on the right path for that? Oh, no. No, no, no. That's NOT appropriate. We need to teach you computer science theory first. If your life spirals out of control in the meantime, at least you'll know it was for an appropriate cause.
- atomicnature 4y ago
  First of all, I myself come from a non affluent background, and the students I'm working with are also from a pretty economially/socially disadvantaged background. The factor doesn't change the teacher's job. The teacher's job is, if you're in grade 5, to take you to grade 6. Sometimes you as a student may dislike the process, since it involves learning stuff you think is not useful, but the teacher ought to know what's profitable to learn. The teacher is in a better position to take the student out of the poverty, than the student themselves. If they don't know what the student needs to learn, then the teacher fails the student. That's my point. Essentially, the teacher's job is not to bend to student requests on what stuff they're to learn. If the teacher is there to "satisfy" the student's goals alone, then there's no hope for civilisation or for the students themselves.
  - logicalmonster 4y ago
    If OP were asking about a public school role, I'd say that your reasoning would be a little more understandable. Maybe we can agree to disagree, but I think considering the needs of the students to be more important from this description. It seems like the students are coming to him outside of their normal school time to try and learn. So they might have a specific goal that makes sense for them. And I don't know these students life details, but since OP mentioned village, it's conceivable their current biggest problem in life is why they're there in the first place: learning enough practical stuff to get a job. I love computer science stuff too, but that can't matter as much to me if I was starving and insecure in my life.
    - atomicnature 4y ago
      > If OP were asking about a public school role, I'd say that your reasoning would be a little more understandable. A teacher is a teacher, whether in public school role, or your local swimming coach or gym trainer. The job of a teacher is to expand your capabilities, to help you see a more capable you and help you get there, one step at a time. The major hurdle is that humans (regardless of economic background) have "bad brains" and many times the learners have horrible expectations about what education is meant to be. There is an effort to build an image for education as a comfortable journey. That's a dangerous image for civilization, and for people of all economic classes. Education is the great equaliser. Remember, when euclid said "There is no royal road to geometry", it was to an emperor! The emperor had his own goals ("royal road to learning"), but such a thing doesn't exist, whether in public schools, or physical exercise, or any other capability such as music/painting. A real teacher will remove the misconception (like Euclid did with the emperor). False salesmen will "teach" you geometry in 3 easy steps :)

eimrine 4y ago

> So, what is the actual goal of these young people in coming to you? I used to have a talk with some kids, their parents and school teachers in our village. All of them use to complain about bad quality of CS teaching in our area. Their goals are different in details but in general they want just to become closer to computers somehow. Somebody wants to get an entry-level job, typically in gamedev field. Somebody wants to improve their electronic toys by programming a microcontroller. Somebody wants to became a musician or a graphical artist and they realize that ability just to play an instrument is not enough nowadays for a musician. Few students have a great reading (therefore researching) skills, their ability to learn anything and everything is not utilized fully by a school program. > Are these people planning to pursue an actual academic and theoretical path, or do they want to become working professional programmers? Most of them have not finished elementary school (in our country this is 12 years of learning starting from 7 y.o.) so a question of finding a work is not going to be a highest priority. One guy is expelled from university and he is going to try again getting a formal education this autumn. So, finishing my classes does not guarantee a student to find a work at all, because of age, but at least I can guarantee a good time spending, filled with discussing of valuable things limited to only CS/STEM areas. To tell the truth, I do not have a defined sequence of the whole classes, I have only a plan of the first 1-hour lecture and aim to gather a feedback questions for the sake of building the second one. Also I have no formed group, just I have promised to a few youngsters to improve their CS skills if they manage to gather in a big group for the sake of respect to my time resources. > What is these peoples' experience level with programming and computers? At least everybody is able to install TikTok on his device with no help. One girl speaks English better than me (a foreign language to all of us). Few boys have some skills with electronics, like repairing MicroUSB in smartphone or playing with Arduino without changing a flash or schematic. One really young boy used to write programs on some smartphone application using graphical programming approach. But most of them, of course, are not very shiny. I do not want to just filter those weak students because almost certainly they will work with computers somehow, and at least they should be familiar with keyboard (our schools do not insist on touchtyping or learning hotkeys or even get familiar with any GUI). But definitely I am willing to work more with talented students because obviously this is a way to spend my time with greater outcome. > You mentioned a village Please stop considering living in a rural place as a bad life. Yes, most of our citizens earns less than $500 monthly, but we have an access to a lot of treasures: free and fresh water everywhere (both in wells and water pipes, because of no pollutions into our local river), organic meats and vegs (because everyone uses to have a farm and advanced families use to have a cattle), clean air everywhere, almost no criminality (because everybody knows everybody), real nature (beautiful forests with no dangerous predators), no noise/light pollutions. Our children use to go to school on foot and no car is required for that. Cockroaches are not a common problem in our households. I have not ever seen any house without electricity except of simple dachas which are not supposed for spending nights. Last but not least, if my student will find any entry-level IT job because of my help I consider this as a great success and maybe a sign to keep improving in a teachership.