7 ms·

Every time this is brought up, there's pearl clutching and handwringing from technical and non-technical folks alike. The fretting goes, "What about the people

Every time this is brought up, there's pearl clutching and handwringing from technical and non-technical folks alike. The fretting goes, "What about the people who don't like it? What about the people who have no aptitude for it?" And to this I ask: What makes programming so special that we should shield people without aptitude from learning it? Many have no aptitude for language – we still require english classes. Many have no passion for the sciences – we still require studying chemistry and biology. Some could care less about history – but every year of high school typically includes a history class scoped to one period or region. So why should programming be different? Why should we shield people from learning a subject which has ubiquity equal to language or mathematics, and infinitely more lucrative application? Why should we accept a substantial chunk of our population being illiterate on a discipline whose misunderstanding can have terrible consequences for both individuals and society at large? Understanding how a computer works, in a world dominated more and more by technology, places you at great advantage. Ignorance of the same leaves you at the mercy of those who are technically proficient and, more and more, limits your lifetime income potential.

dizzystar 14y ago
I don't understand this sentiment. Lots of people get through life just fine, and in fact are immensely successful in life, without knowing how to program. The fact is that the HS flavor of all of those classes are basically recite and regurgitate with a different name attached to it. The other difference is that there are different levels of classes for different levels of students, unless things have changed drastically from 15 years ago, this was the pallet of choices in math for a senior: Pre-Algebra Algebra Trig Geometry Algebra 2 Pre-Calc Calc And sciences were similar (and all elective): Chemistry Biology Physics etc... I really don't get why "computer skills" should be conflated with learning how to program completely. The world is very large and needed skill-sets change very fast. I guess that we should, since it is the current trend, force students to learn about handling large amounts of data and working through statistics and probability courses as well?
- danilocampos 14y ago
  > I really don't get why "computer skills" should be conflated with learning how to program completely. Speaking as someone who has been on both sides, you do not fully understand how a computer works until you understand how to write code for it in some form. Do they need to know how to write a compiler? Absolutely not. But knowing how to write a script with conditional outcomes is probably a worthwhile exercise. > The world is very large and needed skill-sets change very fast. If you believe that computing is going to go away in the next 30 years, that would be a fair point. But we both know that computers are creeping further and further into everyday life. Having a basic grasp on how to direct and control them is an obvious advantage. Your litany of courses does nothing to counter the reality that we are already forcing kids to learn certain subjects. What about computing makes it less valid than history, science or mathematics as a required field of study? We can say with certainty that students are more likely to encounter a computer than they are to encounter Henry VIII, Schrodinger's Cat, or a sperm whale.
  - dizzystar 14y ago
    >> Speaking as someone who has been on both sides, you do not fully understand how a computer works until you understand how to write code for it in some form. Do they need to know how to write a compiler? Absolutely not. But knowing how to write a script with conditional outcomes is probably a worthwhile exercise. Oh, good, now people think I came out of the womb with a computer in my hands. You're barking up the wrong tree with this argument since I'm probably much "younger" than even you are.
    - danilocampos 14y ago
      I ask again: What about computer literacy, at the level of understanding the software that makes such devices work, makes it less valid than history, science or mathematics as a required field of study? Put your fingers in your ears if you'd like, the crucial point is that we've already got a system where you have to learn things you don't necessarily want to learn. What is it about the most important growth subject of the next century that exempts it from such an externally-imposed curriculum?
barakm 14y ago
+1 to exactly this. Just because a field is new doesn't mean it isn't pervasive. We had a required "computer skills" class at my high school (over a decade ago) that was, by all measures of the term, useless. Any of my friends who were proficient enough to merely browse the web at the time were already too advanced to learn anything from it. Mind, it was also taught by someone laughably inept. And yet, there we have it, a 'required' computer course. These days, toddlers use iPads. The web is beyond pervasive. I have no idea what my old high school is doing, but I can't imagine it's changed much. Most kids will never use this skill, but then that's what all teenagers say. Some will! By no means will they be writing iOS apps. Or talking efficiency or language design any of what the naysaying comments suggest. If we can teach that computers are not 'magic' and help them understand some of the bare minimums of control flow, logic, and so on (however that may be achieved; Scratch-like, JS, whathaveyou) -- that computers only do what you tell them -- it'll make a dent in society.
ryanmolden 14y ago
My view would be that people that are interested, the most likely to pursue it as a career, don't need a requirement to drive participation. Those forced to do it like they are forced to take <insert many other subjects here> are not really likely to learn anything terribly useful, or remember it. They may cram for a test and be able to pop out a half-working FizzBuzz implementation (You're hired!!), but I suspect a year or two down the line anything learned will be forgotten and what will they have truly gained? I am all for the availability of these kinds of classes, my high school certainly did not have them, but the idea of making it required stinks of a ham-fisted way to solve the 'we don't have enough STEM graduates to compete with <insert foreign boogie-man country here>!!'. I have lots of friends outside the tech sphere, of various levels of understanding of computers. I don't know if any of them would be immediately advantaged by doing some deep dive learning course in programming over any other topic in which they lack depth. As a techie I would like to scream YES, but as a realist I am not so sure.
- Nursie 14y ago
  I got into computer programming comparatively late, because it wasn't taught that it was even a thing. I didn't know it was a career option, an academic discipline, anything. Computers were just the thing this boring woman taught us to do spreadsheets on. At home my old C64 was something that could be programmed, sure, but I was under the impression that was basically a toy. If I hadn't had a parent who were at least interested in this stuff I would have been completely unaware. In fact worse than that, the boring 'computer proficiency' type courses actually put me off investigating anything to do with this area. Beyond that, with the proliferation of consumption devices, the actual machine and code part of the computer is more hidden than ever before. Computers run more and more of everything, we owe it to our kids to at least tell them that they can be programmed, and give every kid at least a small intro into how to do it.
  - ryanmolden 14y ago
    Yep, that why I said I supported the availability of the courses. My high school had none, as in 0, optional or not. My scepticism is around forcing kids to do things they are not interested in and the beneficial outcomes thereof. I took a lot of required classes in high school that I did not pay any attention in and could tell you basically nothing about them today. I think tech folks have a hard time understanding people's ambivalence around programming. I have a friend who is a geologist, spends his day, to the best of my understanding, studying rocks. That sounds terribly boring to me, but then again I am not a geologist, and my job probably sounds terribly boring to him. Forcing me to take that class in high school is unlikely to have changed that or given me much more of an appreciation of it.
rndmize 14y ago
I'm largely of the opinion that aptitude has little to do with anything. It seems that a much bigger problem is our tools for teaching conceptual material are simply terrible. (I'm actually tempted to argue that our tools for teaching a wide variety of material are terrible, but conceptual stuff is especially bad.) http://www.npr.org/2012/01/01/144550920/physicists-seek-to-lose-the-lecture-as-teaching-tool http://www.npr.org/2012/01/01/144550920/physicists-seek-to-l... The link above is an article about how college level students in introductory physics classes have/are failing spectacularly to learn the basic principles of physics. The key parts: > While most physics students can recite Newton's second law of motion, Harvard's Mazur says, the conceptual test developed by Hestenes showed that after an entire semester they understood only about 14 percent more about the fundamental concepts of physics. When Mazur read the results, he shook his head in disbelief. The test covered such basic material. > "I gave it to my students only to discover that they didn't do much better," he says. > The test has now been given to tens of thousands of students around the world and the results are virtually the same everywhere. The traditional lecture-based physics course produces little or no change in most students' fundamental understanding of how the physical world works. Mazur notes later in the article that after making major changes in his teaching methods and moving away from lectures and towards student group discussions, the students' learned roughly three times as much material. This is a hilariously large increase, and I suspect it to be the low-hanging fruit as far as potential improvements. A hundred years ago, Maria Montessori developed methods of teaching that are largely the opposite of traditional lecture-based education systems. Students pursue goals largely independently and at their own pace. She developed materials that grounded complex concepts in the real world - my favorite examples of which are the binomial and trinomial cubes. Here's a link that explains how and why the binomial cube, which represents an algebraic (and fairly complex!) concept, is a material provided to 4-5 year old students: http://www.montessoriworld.org/sensory/sbinoml.html http://www.montessoriworld.org/sensory/sbinoml.html Today, we have computer games that allow us to discard the limits of physical reality. We can create interactive software to teach or prepare students for concepts that might not be possible with physical materials. Why explain the principles of ecology when you could create a simulated, manipulable world that teaches the user simply by interacting with it? Why not have discussions and lectures following this, once the core material has already been presented and experimented with so that the students can begin with at least a partial understanding? Learning to program doesn't strike me as any more difficult than learning any other subject. Occasional posts show up here about how someone is teaching their child to program - often well before their teen years. What separates those children from the average child other than economic situation and available opportunities?
EnderMB 14y ago
I believe the whole "all kids should code" bandwagon is over the top, mainly because to me coding at its most basic form is a skill that is acquired through equal parts of learning and experience, very similar to the likes of plumbing or car maintenance. My biggest issue is that most people for mandatory programming often believe that it will make kids "programmers" and will make them understand computers. For starters, I know a load of working programmers that don't really understand computers that well, and programming for an hour or two a week for a few months isn't going to make you a programmer, no more than me cooking dinner every night makes me a chef, or fixing a leaky pipe makes me a plumber. I do think that programming should be taught in schools, as people need to learn the production side of the tools that society relies on so much. I also think that schools could go much further in teaching kids rudimentary skills for life as well, like fixing things around the house, basic car maintenance and basic money skills. In my mind programming is no more important than any of these skills, and if programming is to be taught in schools then so should these skills.
- Nursie 14y ago
  oops, ignore downvote, my mouse slipped. Yeah, totally the mouse's fault.
RandallBrown 14y ago
It's not even about aptitude or utility. It's about teaching people to think differently. Programming teaches people to think in a way that's helpful to every day life. It teaches people how to solve problems logically. That is a big deal.
gte910h 14y ago
Most people don't have a strong aptitude for trig, but you still learn it.

dizzystar 14y ago

I don't understand this sentiment. Lots of people get through life just fine, and in fact are immensely successful in life, without knowing how to program. The fact is that the HS flavor of all of those classes are basically recite and regurgitate with a different name attached to it. The other difference is that there are different levels of classes for different levels of students, unless things have changed drastically from 15 years ago, this was the pallet of choices in math for a senior: Pre-Algebra Algebra Trig Geometry Algebra 2 Pre-Calc Calc And sciences were similar (and all elective): Chemistry Biology Physics etc... I really don't get why "computer skills" should be conflated with learning how to program completely. The world is very large and needed skill-sets change very fast. I guess that we should, since it is the current trend, force students to learn about handling large amounts of data and working through statistics and probability courses as well?

danilocampos 14y ago
> I really don't get why "computer skills" should be conflated with learning how to program completely. Speaking as someone who has been on both sides, you do not fully understand how a computer works until you understand how to write code for it in some form. Do they need to know how to write a compiler? Absolutely not. But knowing how to write a script with conditional outcomes is probably a worthwhile exercise. > The world is very large and needed skill-sets change very fast. If you believe that computing is going to go away in the next 30 years, that would be a fair point. But we both know that computers are creeping further and further into everyday life. Having a basic grasp on how to direct and control them is an obvious advantage. Your litany of courses does nothing to counter the reality that we are already forcing kids to learn certain subjects. What about computing makes it less valid than history, science or mathematics as a required field of study? We can say with certainty that students are more likely to encounter a computer than they are to encounter Henry VIII, Schrodinger's Cat, or a sperm whale.
- dizzystar 14y ago
  >> Speaking as someone who has been on both sides, you do not fully understand how a computer works until you understand how to write code for it in some form. Do they need to know how to write a compiler? Absolutely not. But knowing how to write a script with conditional outcomes is probably a worthwhile exercise. Oh, good, now people think I came out of the womb with a computer in my hands. You're barking up the wrong tree with this argument since I'm probably much "younger" than even you are.
  - danilocampos 14y ago
    I ask again: What about computer literacy, at the level of understanding the software that makes such devices work, makes it less valid than history, science or mathematics as a required field of study? Put your fingers in your ears if you'd like, the crucial point is that we've already got a system where you have to learn things you don't necessarily want to learn. What is it about the most important growth subject of the next century that exempts it from such an externally-imposed curriculum?

barakm 14y ago

+1 to exactly this. Just because a field is new doesn't mean it isn't pervasive. We had a required "computer skills" class at my high school (over a decade ago) that was, by all measures of the term, useless. Any of my friends who were proficient enough to merely browse the web at the time were already too advanced to learn anything from it. Mind, it was also taught by someone laughably inept. And yet, there we have it, a 'required' computer course. These days, toddlers use iPads. The web is beyond pervasive. I have no idea what my old high school is doing, but I can't imagine it's changed much. Most kids will never use this skill, but then that's what all teenagers say. Some will! By no means will they be writing iOS apps. Or talking efficiency or language design any of what the naysaying comments suggest. If we can teach that computers are not 'magic' and help them understand some of the bare minimums of control flow, logic, and so on (however that may be achieved; Scratch-like, JS, whathaveyou) -- that computers only do what you tell them -- it'll make a dent in society.

ryanmolden 14y ago

My view would be that people that are interested, the most likely to pursue it as a career, don't need a requirement to drive participation. Those forced to do it like they are forced to take <insert many other subjects here> are not really likely to learn anything terribly useful, or remember it. They may cram for a test and be able to pop out a half-working FizzBuzz implementation (You're hired!!), but I suspect a year or two down the line anything learned will be forgotten and what will they have truly gained? I am all for the availability of these kinds of classes, my high school certainly did not have them, but the idea of making it required stinks of a ham-fisted way to solve the 'we don't have enough STEM graduates to compete with <insert foreign boogie-man country here>!!'. I have lots of friends outside the tech sphere, of various levels of understanding of computers. I don't know if any of them would be immediately advantaged by doing some deep dive learning course in programming over any other topic in which they lack depth. As a techie I would like to scream YES, but as a realist I am not so sure.

Nursie 14y ago
I got into computer programming comparatively late, because it wasn't taught that it was even a thing. I didn't know it was a career option, an academic discipline, anything. Computers were just the thing this boring woman taught us to do spreadsheets on. At home my old C64 was something that could be programmed, sure, but I was under the impression that was basically a toy. If I hadn't had a parent who were at least interested in this stuff I would have been completely unaware. In fact worse than that, the boring 'computer proficiency' type courses actually put me off investigating anything to do with this area. Beyond that, with the proliferation of consumption devices, the actual machine and code part of the computer is more hidden than ever before. Computers run more and more of everything, we owe it to our kids to at least tell them that they can be programmed, and give every kid at least a small intro into how to do it.
- ryanmolden 14y ago
  Yep, that why I said I supported the availability of the courses. My high school had none, as in 0, optional or not. My scepticism is around forcing kids to do things they are not interested in and the beneficial outcomes thereof. I took a lot of required classes in high school that I did not pay any attention in and could tell you basically nothing about them today. I think tech folks have a hard time understanding people's ambivalence around programming. I have a friend who is a geologist, spends his day, to the best of my understanding, studying rocks. That sounds terribly boring to me, but then again I am not a geologist, and my job probably sounds terribly boring to him. Forcing me to take that class in high school is unlikely to have changed that or given me much more of an appreciation of it.

rndmize 14y ago

I'm largely of the opinion that aptitude has little to do with anything. It seems that a much bigger problem is our tools for teaching conceptual material are simply terrible. (I'm actually tempted to argue that our tools for teaching a wide variety of material are terrible, but conceptual stuff is especially bad.) http://www.npr.org/2012/01/01/144550920/physicists-seek-to-lose-the-lecture-as-teaching-tool http://www.npr.org/2012/01/01/144550920/physicists-seek-to-l... The link above is an article about how college level students in introductory physics classes have/are failing spectacularly to learn the basic principles of physics. The key parts: > While most physics students can recite Newton's second law of motion, Harvard's Mazur says, the conceptual test developed by Hestenes showed that after an entire semester they understood only about 14 percent more about the fundamental concepts of physics. When Mazur read the results, he shook his head in disbelief. The test covered such basic material. > "I gave it to my students only to discover that they didn't do much better," he says. > The test has now been given to tens of thousands of students around the world and the results are virtually the same everywhere. The traditional lecture-based physics course produces little or no change in most students' fundamental understanding of how the physical world works. Mazur notes later in the article that after making major changes in his teaching methods and moving away from lectures and towards student group discussions, the students' learned roughly three times as much material. This is a hilariously large increase, and I suspect it to be the low-hanging fruit as far as potential improvements. A hundred years ago, Maria Montessori developed methods of teaching that are largely the opposite of traditional lecture-based education systems. Students pursue goals largely independently and at their own pace. She developed materials that grounded complex concepts in the real world - my favorite examples of which are the binomial and trinomial cubes. Here's a link that explains how and why the binomial cube, which represents an algebraic (and fairly complex!) concept, is a material provided to 4-5 year old students: http://www.montessoriworld.org/sensory/sbinoml.html http://www.montessoriworld.org/sensory/sbinoml.html Today, we have computer games that allow us to discard the limits of physical reality. We can create interactive software to teach or prepare students for concepts that might not be possible with physical materials. Why explain the principles of ecology when you could create a simulated, manipulable world that teaches the user simply by interacting with it? Why not have discussions and lectures following this, once the core material has already been presented and experimented with so that the students can begin with at least a partial understanding? Learning to program doesn't strike me as any more difficult than learning any other subject. Occasional posts show up here about how someone is teaching their child to program - often well before their teen years. What separates those children from the average child other than economic situation and available opportunities?

EnderMB 14y ago

I believe the whole "all kids should code" bandwagon is over the top, mainly because to me coding at its most basic form is a skill that is acquired through equal parts of learning and experience, very similar to the likes of plumbing or car maintenance. My biggest issue is that most people for mandatory programming often believe that it will make kids "programmers" and will make them understand computers. For starters, I know a load of working programmers that don't really understand computers that well, and programming for an hour or two a week for a few months isn't going to make you a programmer, no more than me cooking dinner every night makes me a chef, or fixing a leaky pipe makes me a plumber. I do think that programming should be taught in schools, as people need to learn the production side of the tools that society relies on so much. I also think that schools could go much further in teaching kids rudimentary skills for life as well, like fixing things around the house, basic car maintenance and basic money skills. In my mind programming is no more important than any of these skills, and if programming is to be taught in schools then so should these skills.

Nursie 14y ago
oops, ignore downvote, my mouse slipped. Yeah, totally the mouse's fault.

RandallBrown 14y ago

It's not even about aptitude or utility. It's about teaching people to think differently. Programming teaches people to think in a way that's helpful to every day life. It teaches people how to solve problems logically. That is a big deal.

gte910h 14y ago

Most people don't have a strong aptitude for trig, but you still learn it.