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For better or worse, our educational system is centered around the idea of exposure to potentially worthless experiences. Everyone knows people who haven't had

by hooande 13y ago

For better or worse, our educational system is centered around the idea of exposure to potentially worthless experiences. Everyone knows people who haven't had to think about concepts from trigonometry or algebra 2 since school. Children are required to take music classes, art classes, physed. We don't teach these things because they are practically useful in any way, but because 1 out of every N kids discovers that they are really good at something. I hated all of the effort wasted in the modern educational system. But when you see a kid's eyes light up when they blow into a recorder for the first time, or see how they respond to praise of their art class drawing, or see their face when they score the winning touchdown, you can see the value and importance. We can't take that away from people. So we study things that might not matter. I don't see any reason why computer programming shouldn't be that list of experiences. There are people in the world who would be rock star hackers if only they'd been given an early opportunity. Even a modest increase in the number of technically literate people can have great benefits to society. There is a clear trend toward automation. We all know people who wouldn't benefit at all from computer programming experience. But that might not be true in twenty or thirty years. Even lawyers might need to learn more about data structures and server management in the coming decades. The ideal case is that we end up in an automated world in which everyone can pitch in a little programming to make things better. Making some technical knowledge universal might be the first step.

NamTaf 13y ago
I disagree completely that they're potentially worthless experiences geared only for the 1 in N who embrace the subject. The content of the material is in many cases mostly irrelevant - it's the fundamentals behind that content that matters. Claiming that it 'doesn't matter' because you don't actively utilise it in your job later on misses the point entirely. For example: Maths - teaches logic and critical analysis of problems. No one cares if you don't remember SOHCAHTOA or the like. If you can think about using knowns to resolve an unknown, you've got the main thrust of maths classes as they stand for non-Engineering, non-Science people. Physical Ed - teaches healthy habits, ideally. No one cares if you remember the rules to field hockey or rugby or learn to run faster. The idea is that you learn/are exposed to healthy exercise habits and (ideally) healthy nutrition/etc. if it includes that too. Music - teaches quite similar stuff to maths, in fact. No one cares if you can't re-draw the circle of fifths, however understanding the patterns in music and why they exist (e.g.: why you don't tie the 2nd and 3rd beats of the 4/4 time signature) gives you insight in to the mathematical underpinnings of music and lets you appreciate it more to boot. Not to mention playing music engages and assists the brain areas used at maths, problem solving, etc. Art - You learn to understand and appreciate design better. You learn to appreciate culture. No one cares if you can't remember what primary colours to blend to produce a certain new colour, but understanding the role of shadows for contrast, or vertical lines in e.g.: paintings of architecture, help you appreciate the world around you. Science - Again like maths, logical intuition and problem solving. e.g.: for physics, no one cares that you can't recite the equations of linear motion, but understanding why something goes up and then falls down, intuitively, is a good way to teach critical analysis of problems. The second benefit of all of this is that you then also get exposed to this content, which means you get a general introduction to those fields. As you say, it helps bring the fruit to bear whereby people find out they enjoy/have talent in something, but additionally it means that because you sat through music in school you probably at least understand why some songs sound sad (minor scales) and others sound happy (major scales) so you can appreciate it more. I absolutely agree with you that programming should be in there. Again, it's not about learning how to declare variables in python in particular, but rather about the logical underpinnings of code structure and understanding how that all works. The benefit isn't going to be that 100% of kids can read some javascript dump and work out why the webpage doesn't load properly. It'll be that when they're sitting down in excel and they're trying to assemble that data their boss wants in a particular way, they'll be more capable of logically stepping through each component step of the equations required and understanding exactly how it must be built up to produce the result they're after.
- araes 13y ago
  Very nice answer and much appreciated. One additional bit which I only saw lightly touched on is the correlation between breadth of knowledge and general intelligence / creativity. Exposure to a wide range of subjects helps build the mental linkages for students so that they can form the equivalent of mental analogies about new material and solve new problems by reference to solutions in other areas. Coding has a lot of potential in this area, as the fundamental concepts of algorithms and machine logic are broadly applicable to a wide range of subjects. In addition, the solutions you see in programming (barnes hutt trees, steepest decent, network theory, binary search, ect...) are optimized solutions to fundamental questions of how the world works. Once those solutions have been seen in programming, the understanding of the world they communicate can then be taken and applied to comprehend and solve problems in other areas of life.
kamaal 13y ago
>>There is a clear trend toward automation. Mankind has been automating since we could automate. The moment there is technology available to automate something we automate it. The invention of wheel was automation. The invention of the cart was automation and so on. The moment there is knowledge, tools and technology to reduce human effort, we invent newer tools that reduce human effort. Which leads to further knowledge that reduces human effort further and so on. Programming is a new tool in this never ending endless task that human kind has taken since it could think. Programming enables a device to make decisions, based on some conditions and send those decisions to mechanical devices. Its hard to predict how this will pan out in the future, if the past is any indication. The future is hard to predict.

by hooande 13y ago

NamTaf 13y ago

I disagree completely that they're potentially worthless experiences geared only for the 1 in N who embrace the subject. The content of the material is in many cases mostly irrelevant - it's the fundamentals behind that content that matters. Claiming that it 'doesn't matter' because you don't actively utilise it in your job later on misses the point entirely. For example: Maths - teaches logic and critical analysis of problems. No one cares if you don't remember SOHCAHTOA or the like. If you can think about using knowns to resolve an unknown, you've got the main thrust of maths classes as they stand for non-Engineering, non-Science people. Physical Ed - teaches healthy habits, ideally. No one cares if you remember the rules to field hockey or rugby or learn to run faster. The idea is that you learn/are exposed to healthy exercise habits and (ideally) healthy nutrition/etc. if it includes that too. Music - teaches quite similar stuff to maths, in fact. No one cares if you can't re-draw the circle of fifths, however understanding the patterns in music and why they exist (e.g.: why you don't tie the 2nd and 3rd beats of the 4/4 time signature) gives you insight in to the mathematical underpinnings of music and lets you appreciate it more to boot. Not to mention playing music engages and assists the brain areas used at maths, problem solving, etc. Art - You learn to understand and appreciate design better. You learn to appreciate culture. No one cares if you can't remember what primary colours to blend to produce a certain new colour, but understanding the role of shadows for contrast, or vertical lines in e.g.: paintings of architecture, help you appreciate the world around you. Science - Again like maths, logical intuition and problem solving. e.g.: for physics, no one cares that you can't recite the equations of linear motion, but understanding why something goes up and then falls down, intuitively, is a good way to teach critical analysis of problems. The second benefit of all of this is that you then also get exposed to this content, which means you get a general introduction to those fields. As you say, it helps bring the fruit to bear whereby people find out they enjoy/have talent in something, but additionally it means that because you sat through music in school you probably at least understand why some songs sound sad (minor scales) and others sound happy (major scales) so you can appreciate it more. I absolutely agree with you that programming should be in there. Again, it's not about learning how to declare variables in python in particular, but rather about the logical underpinnings of code structure and understanding how that all works. The benefit isn't going to be that 100% of kids can read some javascript dump and work out why the webpage doesn't load properly. It'll be that when they're sitting down in excel and they're trying to assemble that data their boss wants in a particular way, they'll be more capable of logically stepping through each component step of the equations required and understanding exactly how it must be built up to produce the result they're after.

araes 13y ago
Very nice answer and much appreciated. One additional bit which I only saw lightly touched on is the correlation between breadth of knowledge and general intelligence / creativity. Exposure to a wide range of subjects helps build the mental linkages for students so that they can form the equivalent of mental analogies about new material and solve new problems by reference to solutions in other areas. Coding has a lot of potential in this area, as the fundamental concepts of algorithms and machine logic are broadly applicable to a wide range of subjects. In addition, the solutions you see in programming (barnes hutt trees, steepest decent, network theory, binary search, ect...) are optimized solutions to fundamental questions of how the world works. Once those solutions have been seen in programming, the understanding of the world they communicate can then be taken and applied to comprehend and solve problems in other areas of life.

kamaal 13y ago

>>There is a clear trend toward automation. Mankind has been automating since we could automate. The moment there is technology available to automate something we automate it. The invention of wheel was automation. The invention of the cart was automation and so on. The moment there is knowledge, tools and technology to reduce human effort, we invent newer tools that reduce human effort. Which leads to further knowledge that reduces human effort further and so on. Programming is a new tool in this never ending endless task that human kind has taken since it could think. Programming enables a device to make decisions, based on some conditions and send those decisions to mechanical devices. Its hard to predict how this will pan out in the future, if the past is any indication. The future is hard to predict.