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I'm hoping the current frenzy around coding dies a bit, and, after the dust settles, people bother to implement it correctly. Best example I can demonstrate of

I'm hoping the current frenzy around coding dies a bit, and, after the dust settles, people bother to implement it correctly. Best example I can demonstrate of the ridiculousness that we are in right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7x7GYItzS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7x7GYItzS4 Teaching kids to code is fantastic -- but its not what 98% of these initiatives are doing. I got to visit a school in NYC which taught "coding" to their kids... it was literally kids copying and pasting things into a Flash editor with ZERO understanding of what they are doing... truly heartbraking.

ljk 11y ago
Totally guessing here, but I feel like there's a problem for grade schools to attract talent to teach CS _right_....
- brudgers 11y ago
  One useful but of course not absolute generalization is that grade school teachers "want to teach kids something" and high school teachers "want to teach something to kids." Which is to say that high school teachers are more likely to be motivated by subject first and grade school teachers are more likely to be motivated by kids first. For something like computer science, It's going to be a rare person with a passion for computer science who jumps on the grade school track in a college of education. A grade school just isn't a place conducive to expressing that passion.
- ChicagoBoy11 11y ago
  I think it goes beyond any sort of talent pinch. Any teacher who could teach a calc or pre-calc class certainly would be able to teach a beginning coding class to middle or high-schoolers. The real issue is that the people who come up with what should be in these courses today are far more concerned with how the course LOOKS than its actual substance. If you think about math, for instance, or heck, even the AP Comp. Sci. curriculum, you learn A TON of really deep, important stuff... but you actually produce... well, nothing. Somehow with "coding," though, that's 100% not okay anymore; all of a sudden, the success of the kids and your program is judged largely on the projects that these kids do. Administrators (from superintendents to teachers and everyone in between) aggressively advertise that their kids "make apps" and "code websites" and everything else of the sort. That's what they are maximizing. What the students actually learned seems rather secondary. Just look around at all the popular coding initiatives today: code.org, scratch, etc... the topic of assessment is notably absent. What all of this ends up becoming is teachers pushing super elaborate projects in which kids do little more than copy the teacher and make minor alterations. But, the kids feel good 'cause they are told they can "code", the teachers feel good 'cause they see the projects come out the door, and the public-at-large is none the wiser. The truth, though, is that the kids learned precious little -- actually, worse: The one example in NYC that I mentioned, for instance, simply reinforced the idea that coding is a bunch of "magical incantations" that they can't understand but that somehow does things. That doesn't empower the student; it just reinforces in him the idea that he is powerless.

ljk 11y ago

Totally guessing here, but I feel like there's a problem for grade schools to attract talent to teach CS _right_....

brudgers 11y ago
One useful but of course not absolute generalization is that grade school teachers "want to teach kids something" and high school teachers "want to teach something to kids." Which is to say that high school teachers are more likely to be motivated by subject first and grade school teachers are more likely to be motivated by kids first. For something like computer science, It's going to be a rare person with a passion for computer science who jumps on the grade school track in a college of education. A grade school just isn't a place conducive to expressing that passion.
ChicagoBoy11 11y ago
I think it goes beyond any sort of talent pinch. Any teacher who could teach a calc or pre-calc class certainly would be able to teach a beginning coding class to middle or high-schoolers. The real issue is that the people who come up with what should be in these courses today are far more concerned with how the course LOOKS than its actual substance. If you think about math, for instance, or heck, even the AP Comp. Sci. curriculum, you learn A TON of really deep, important stuff... but you actually produce... well, nothing. Somehow with "coding," though, that's 100% not okay anymore; all of a sudden, the success of the kids and your program is judged largely on the projects that these kids do. Administrators (from superintendents to teachers and everyone in between) aggressively advertise that their kids "make apps" and "code websites" and everything else of the sort. That's what they are maximizing. What the students actually learned seems rather secondary. Just look around at all the popular coding initiatives today: code.org, scratch, etc... the topic of assessment is notably absent. What all of this ends up becoming is teachers pushing super elaborate projects in which kids do little more than copy the teacher and make minor alterations. But, the kids feel good 'cause they are told they can "code", the teachers feel good 'cause they see the projects come out the door, and the public-at-large is none the wiser. The truth, though, is that the kids learned precious little -- actually, worse: The one example in NYC that I mentioned, for instance, simply reinforced the idea that coding is a bunch of "magical incantations" that they can't understand but that somehow does things. That doesn't empower the student; it just reinforces in him the idea that he is powerless.