4 ms·

I don't think this will do much good. I was forced to take 5 years of Spanish through school. Hardly know how to speak it now. The people who excel are usually

by logn 13y ago

I don't think this will do much good. I was forced to take 5 years of Spanish through school. Hardly know how to speak it now. The people who excel are usually driven by their own interest. Nothing makes something miserable like a gov't/school mandate.

sp332 13y ago
Making it visible and accessible is important. Otherwise how would people find out that they really liked Spanish, US Civil War history, or programming?
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  It is visible and accessible. Perhaps not if your only interaction is with the smartphone singularity, but I agree with the OP that programming is largely self-guided. Making it a compulsory school subject isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is distressing as to how well it'll actually be taught, whether good impressions will be received from it and whether or not it will be deceiving. Schools aren't known for being apt at actually fostering education (but rather routine and rote), much less being engaging. I have a feeling this will be simply an excuse for the education system to ostensibly appear progressive and forward-thinking, but without actually providing decent resources. An exercise in flaunting that will likely have no actual effect on student impressions, especially not if typical public school teaching methods are employed. I think that it's better to have no real understanding of coding than no understanding whatsoever. That and I honestly think system administration is more important for most people. Learning to code without learning sysadmin work and how your environment actually functions is an unfilled gap.
  - sp332 13y ago
    There's no reason programming has to be self-guided any more than math or history. The numbers show that kids have basically no exposure to programming in school http://techland.time.com/2012/07/16/can-we-fix-computer-science-education-in-america/ http://techland.time.com/2012/07/16/can-we-fix-computer-scie...
    - vezzy-fnord 13y ago
      Yet that hasn't really stopped the tech industry from booming whatsoever. But like I said: the intentions may be benevolent, however the execution will likely be mediocre.
  - Double_Cast 13y ago
    > this will be simply an excuse for the education system to ostensibly appear progressive and forward-thinking, but without actually providing decent resources. This has been my impression of the U.S. education system since NCLB. Most core subjects share this malaise, so it's not like programming is unique. Perhaps your qualm is misdirected?
mjn 13y ago
I feel the same way about Spanish, but I do think some of my current interest in computation is related to computers in the curriculum when I was younger (sometimes indirectly). Among other things I remember positively: playing with Logo when I was very young; playing some educational games like Oregon Trail; and doing a few assignments in Hypercard in a general computer-literacy course. That one was kind of interesting because it was not officially "programming": we mostly learned how to type, how to use basic office software, how a Mac desktop worked, etc. But somehow someone had thrown Hypercard into the "computer literacy" jumble, probably because it was part of the default Mac ecosystem at the time, and had some buzz. And that started letting us do programming of a sort, which quite a few kids picked up on as being something you could express yourself in, while not being particularly intimidating. Towards the end of high school I did take AP Computer Science and that was indeed some mixture of stupid and boring. I don't know how much to blame C++ (student questions ended up devolving into being mostly about iostreams) and how much to blame the teacher or curriculum. But that would probably have killed my interest in CS, if Logo and Hypercard hadn't already kindled it (and on my own time, I stumbled across the ability to write mIRC scripts).
philliphaydon 13y ago
It does open up doors for kids who were not aware of programming and are now open to develop an interest in it that they may have never had a chance to develop before. It's hard enough getting to the end of school and figuring out what you want to do for a living.
Double_Cast 13y ago
To paraphrase my high school physics teacher: > Yeah, electromagnetism isn't as intuitive as kinematics. But maybe it would be if kids grew up playing with circuits instead of wooden blocks. Some kids have an aptitude for programming, and some don't. Perhaps initiatives like these will introduce "the discipline that is CS" to some whom otherwise would not have known it exists?

by logn 13y ago

sp332 13y ago

Making it visible and accessible is important. Otherwise how would people find out that they really liked Spanish, US Civil War history, or programming?

vezzy-fnord 13y ago
It is visible and accessible. Perhaps not if your only interaction is with the smartphone singularity, but I agree with the OP that programming is largely self-guided. Making it a compulsory school subject isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is distressing as to how well it'll actually be taught, whether good impressions will be received from it and whether or not it will be deceiving. Schools aren't known for being apt at actually fostering education (but rather routine and rote), much less being engaging. I have a feeling this will be simply an excuse for the education system to ostensibly appear progressive and forward-thinking, but without actually providing decent resources. An exercise in flaunting that will likely have no actual effect on student impressions, especially not if typical public school teaching methods are employed. I think that it's better to have no real understanding of coding than no understanding whatsoever. That and I honestly think system administration is more important for most people. Learning to code without learning sysadmin work and how your environment actually functions is an unfilled gap.
- sp332 13y ago
  There's no reason programming has to be self-guided any more than math or history. The numbers show that kids have basically no exposure to programming in school http://techland.time.com/2012/07/16/can-we-fix-computer-science-education-in-america/ http://techland.time.com/2012/07/16/can-we-fix-computer-scie...
  - vezzy-fnord 13y ago
    Yet that hasn't really stopped the tech industry from booming whatsoever. But like I said: the intentions may be benevolent, however the execution will likely be mediocre.
- Double_Cast 13y ago
  > this will be simply an excuse for the education system to ostensibly appear progressive and forward-thinking, but without actually providing decent resources. This has been my impression of the U.S. education system since NCLB. Most core subjects share this malaise, so it's not like programming is unique. Perhaps your qualm is misdirected?

mjn 13y ago

I feel the same way about Spanish, but I do think some of my current interest in computation is related to computers in the curriculum when I was younger (sometimes indirectly). Among other things I remember positively: playing with Logo when I was very young; playing some educational games like Oregon Trail; and doing a few assignments in Hypercard in a general computer-literacy course. That one was kind of interesting because it was not officially "programming": we mostly learned how to type, how to use basic office software, how a Mac desktop worked, etc. But somehow someone had thrown Hypercard into the "computer literacy" jumble, probably because it was part of the default Mac ecosystem at the time, and had some buzz. And that started letting us do programming of a sort, which quite a few kids picked up on as being something you could express yourself in, while not being particularly intimidating. Towards the end of high school I did take AP Computer Science and that was indeed some mixture of stupid and boring. I don't know how much to blame C++ (student questions ended up devolving into being mostly about iostreams) and how much to blame the teacher or curriculum. But that would probably have killed my interest in CS, if Logo and Hypercard hadn't already kindled it (and on my own time, I stumbled across the ability to write mIRC scripts).

philliphaydon 13y ago

It does open up doors for kids who were not aware of programming and are now open to develop an interest in it that they may have never had a chance to develop before. It's hard enough getting to the end of school and figuring out what you want to do for a living.

Double_Cast 13y ago

To paraphrase my high school physics teacher: > Yeah, electromagnetism isn't as intuitive as kinematics. But maybe it would be if kids grew up playing with circuits instead of wooden blocks. Some kids have an aptitude for programming, and some don't. Perhaps initiatives like these will introduce "the discipline that is CS" to some whom otherwise would not have known it exists?