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"Do you expect Chemistry students to walk out of school ready to begin work in a lab?" Yes? As someone who didn't major in chemistry or go into a related fiel

"Do you expect Chemistry students to walk out of school ready to begin work in a lab?" Yes? As someone who didn't major in chemistry or go into a related field... what the hell does someone with a degree in chemistry do when they graduate? Go and work in a coffeeshop? Edit: the original post seems to have been edited several times since my original comment, including the clarification that she's a high school teacher in the UK.

MarcScott 12y ago
The author teaches CS to 11-18 year old students. In the UK School != University
- newaccountfool 12y ago
  Least some on read the side note.
- bicknergseng 12y ago
  Some perspective, but doesn't necessarily change my point. Why should we allow CS to be bludgeoned into the same awful educational pattern of memorization and ...irrelevance... that we've allowed to happen to mathematics? Students often hate math because of the awful, disconnected, uninspired way it is taught. Spend time teaching students how to make games with Unity or iPhone apps or whatever! Not only can teachers use those as amazing vehicles for CS fundamentals, but a teenager who builds something real and has fun doing it has a much better chance of actually becoming interested in CS.
  - zarify 12y ago
    I'm not sure what your experience is with kids of high school age, but in my experience (around 10 years of teaching high school CS) it's very rare to find kids who are capable of jumping into a complex environment and learning much from it. The vast majority, whilst they are interested in writing games or mobile apps etc get discouraged by the weight of new concepts and just tune out unless they get spoon fed everything. Back when Flash was more in favour I used to do ActionScript programming with my 15 year olds as a basic course since it was relatively easy to wrap your head around building something to look at and then attach code to it (one of the few redeeming features of Visual Basic) and even then few kids coped well. I've yet to see much success from high schools I've visited that tout courses that involve mobile development and what have you that don't also have very large pools of students and significant streaming of those kids into the CS course. Now it could be quite valid to argue that perhaps I'm just not good enough at teaching, but I've seen enough top end success with my students that I don't think that's enough to explain it away.
- mikeash 12y ago
  I think there's a major problem with terminology here, because high schools don't teach computer science. They may teach programming, but I've never heard of one that taught anything remotely resembling computer science.
  - vilhelm_s 12y ago
    It's a recent thing! The blog post talks about the "CAS Community". CAS stands for Computing At School, it's a movement to introduce computer science as a subject in British schools. http://computingatschool.org.uk/ http://computingatschool.org.uk/
    - mikeash 12y ago
      Interesting. It looks like the real deal, too. I'm not sure if it's entirely wise. I think the stuff that makes up CS as opposed to software engineering is inherently high-level and fits best into university teaching (sort of like how you learn algebra and maybe calculus in high school, but nothing that a mathematician would consider "math"), but I certainly could be wrong about that.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
sebular 12y ago
No, they know how to work in a lab because they learned that during the internship they had last summer. In school, they learned Chemistry, but it was the workplace that taught them how to apply that knowledge in a professional setting.
vacri 12y ago
In italics, the first line after the heading is "this is high school, not university". Since when did anywhere give recognised degrees as part of a high school education?

MarcScott 12y ago

The author teaches CS to 11-18 year old students. In the UK School != University

newaccountfool 12y ago
Least some on read the side note.
bicknergseng 12y ago
Some perspective, but doesn't necessarily change my point. Why should we allow CS to be bludgeoned into the same awful educational pattern of memorization and ...irrelevance... that we've allowed to happen to mathematics? Students often hate math because of the awful, disconnected, uninspired way it is taught. Spend time teaching students how to make games with Unity or iPhone apps or whatever! Not only can teachers use those as amazing vehicles for CS fundamentals, but a teenager who builds something real and has fun doing it has a much better chance of actually becoming interested in CS.
- zarify 12y ago
  I'm not sure what your experience is with kids of high school age, but in my experience (around 10 years of teaching high school CS) it's very rare to find kids who are capable of jumping into a complex environment and learning much from it. The vast majority, whilst they are interested in writing games or mobile apps etc get discouraged by the weight of new concepts and just tune out unless they get spoon fed everything. Back when Flash was more in favour I used to do ActionScript programming with my 15 year olds as a basic course since it was relatively easy to wrap your head around building something to look at and then attach code to it (one of the few redeeming features of Visual Basic) and even then few kids coped well. I've yet to see much success from high schools I've visited that tout courses that involve mobile development and what have you that don't also have very large pools of students and significant streaming of those kids into the CS course. Now it could be quite valid to argue that perhaps I'm just not good enough at teaching, but I've seen enough top end success with my students that I don't think that's enough to explain it away.
mikeash 12y ago
I think there's a major problem with terminology here, because high schools don't teach computer science. They may teach programming, but I've never heard of one that taught anything remotely resembling computer science.
- vilhelm_s 12y ago
  It's a recent thing! The blog post talks about the "CAS Community". CAS stands for Computing At School, it's a movement to introduce computer science as a subject in British schools. http://computingatschool.org.uk/ http://computingatschool.org.uk/
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Interesting. It looks like the real deal, too. I'm not sure if it's entirely wise. I think the stuff that makes up CS as opposed to software engineering is inherently high-level and fits best into university teaching (sort of like how you learn algebra and maybe calculus in high school, but nothing that a mathematician would consider "math"), but I certainly could be wrong about that.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

sebular 12y ago

No, they know how to work in a lab because they learned that during the internship they had last summer. In school, they learned Chemistry, but it was the workplace that taught them how to apply that knowledge in a professional setting.

vacri 12y ago

In italics, the first line after the heading is "this is high school, not university". Since when did anywhere give recognised degrees as part of a high school education?