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Steve Furber On Why Kids Are Turned Off To Computing Classes
nk497 writes "UK computing legend Steve Furber — co-founder of Acorn and ARM designer — believes students are avoiding computing classes because they teach nothing but the boring basics. Currently studying why the number of students signing up for computing has halved in the past eight years, Furber said schools focus too much on teaching kids how to use spreadsheets, word processors and PowerPoint, rather than teaching more challenging areas such as programming. 'What schools are presenting as ICT as an academic subject is very mundane compared with what students know they can do,' he said. 'It's as if maths was just arithmetic or English was taught as just spelling. It's not unimportant that you can do arithmetic or you can spell, but it certainly doesn't open up the whole world of interest and challenge, if that's all you do.'"
no child left behind and the cert mess = tech just the test and with certification alot of the time they are way off base from the real world or set in a world of free M$ software that in many places will no much to set up how some of the cert tests have things setup.
About 15 years ago.
I did basic on my C64, and various other things on other machines we had at home. Then we had school computing class which taught us how to size and colour a font, put together a spreadsheet and other such guff.
Later I got a programmable casio calculator and programmed that. Somehow it didn't occur to me to actually go into computers until I was 18. No thanks at all to the school.
...and the students learn absolutely dreadful sentence construction besides!
Honestly, your point is very well taken, if I understand it correctly.
The certs you would have to go through to officially teach programming in the schools are so demeaning and outdated, that no programmer would do it -- and I've never met a teacher, even in the hard sciences or tech, who even knew what 'programming a computer' was: they were downright suspicious of the practice, because they couldn't distinguish it from 'hacking'.
They're certified to teach to the test, which means basic MS user skills, and maybe swapping boards in PCs and re-installing...you got it: windows.
The best thing you could do to really educate kids about computing, and not just train them on windows apps is to get them started with 8-bit computers. Yes, BASIC is awful for real development, but it was designed for education and it does this quite well. Removing all the layers of abstraction from modern PCs forces you to really understand what the computer is doing. While the skills aren't directly transferable to modern PCs, the concepts are, and that's what education is all about.
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shit, I even had a programming teacher in college who was typing with 2 fingers.
I've met many programmers that are horrible typists. The two skills do not necessarily go hand-in-hand.
Do you know there is a spelling difference between the words "tech" and "teach", right? If you would learn this it would make deciphering your posts much easier. Second on your list should be about splitting your thoughts into multiple sentences instead of one long run-on sentence that meanders.
Computer science was new and wonderful twenty, perhaps thirty years ago. You could learn a large area of the field even in high school. There were things to discover, things to do, things to share.
Then the commodity computer came and software behemoth companies. For almost anything now there are commercial apps which can do whatever you do faster better and at a level of generality you would never imagine. Wanna write a program plot a graph? There's Mathematica which does it in color.
It's very hard to teach anything interesting if the home computer can do it better and faster. The iPhone programming craze did get people interested in programming again, but I guess that's over now.
Computer science has to realize they are now living in reality like other sciences, low attendance, low interest, and students who either get it or don't. I found when I was teaching college math that freshman calc was the worst possible thing to teach. Anybody interested in math would skip it because they got it long ago. So it will be in Computer science.
They know computing skills are a dead-end pursuit in the first world.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
More like, if maths were just learning to use a calculator. Learning to use a spreadsheet or word processor isn't even about computing. If that passes for computing, then driver's ed could replace physics, and home economics chemistry. It's like they thing that if a computer is involved, it has something to do with computer science. But computers are in almost everything these days.
Bring back the educational BBC TV programmes on computing/programming.
Heck, just do reruns and bring back the old BBC Model B. Kids will learn far more from that than they ever will at schools today.
I have never taken any computing subject at school because of how boring they are. I learnt a lot just by experimenting by myself, buying books, magazines and watching TV. Once upon a time, one used to be able to get great information from magazines and terrestrial television but nowadays, they don't get any more technical than discussing font size and if a case mod with LEDs will make the computer perform better. Pioneering stuff was done years ago on TV, like encouraging people to hack their TVs and pipe the audio to the cassette audio-in on their home computers to try to download a program. It was fun stuff.
Not doing any computing classes at school didn't put a crimp in my career... except perhaps that I never learned to touch-type properly.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
I am the IT director of a school in the US. I can see first hand that the only thing the "educators" are interested in is training students to use application software. Not only that, it must be the absolute latest version of a certain company's office package. It's so the students will get "real world" training. WTF?
While it indeed is important for students to learn to use these tools, by the time some of these students make it into the workforce, the software that students are trained on (and cost so much money to 'license') is 'obsolete.'
What happened to the concept of teaching concepts? How to produce a document using a word processor and not Microsoft Word 2007? I learned word processing with AppleWorks on an Apple //e. I can churn out a basic document in minutes with any word processor I use. How many kids 'trained' in the exclusive world of Microsoft software will ever be able to do this?
I'm very lucky. The administration in the school I work at is not like this. The administration mostly use Windows machines, but the students and teachers all use a mix of Linux thin clients (LTSP!) and Macs. The office package we use is Open Office.
In fact, when I was forced to go to school I tried to avoid all classes because they all taught nothing but the boring basics.
Yes. How horrible that kids were going to school when they were young instead of working in coal mines and getting permanent disabilities before 10. Golly gee, I can't wait to go back to such a world!
There is no "IT personnel shortage" until salaries go up.
As I point out occasionally, "Information Technology" is taking the same path that "stationary engineering" did almost exactly a century century ago. In the 1880s, it was a really big deal if you were the one who could get a steam engine and generator to work together and light up a factory, business, or town. By 1910 or so, it was a routine job. Today, there are still about 25,000 stationary engineers in the United States. It's a good union job. There are electrical engineers designing new equipment, but they're nowhere near the user and have completely different training than the people who install and run the stuff.
That's where IT is going, and it's almost there. Don't worry about it. Just use your iPhone like a good little consumer, and buy your software from Microsoft.
As a sysadmin who has to program from time to time: yes, spreadsheets and word processors are completely unimportant in many regards. They're different, the skills migrate pretty easily, and the likelihood of having to use the same spreadsheet in 3-5 years is negligible.
Basic spreadsheet computations, or Access stuff? Sure, I suppose. Just please don't use a horrible Microsoft Press book: crammed full of "click here" goodness bullshit, they're mind numbing. They're worse than New Math.
Basic programming is, for a beginner, very satisfying - whether it's shell, perl, or VB. "Look what I made" is very horizon opening, regardless of whether it's a crayon drawing, an ash try, a clock, or a highly advanced artificial intelligence. :)
The problem there is that any AI written by a high schooler is likely to be several hundred iterations more complex than the average school teacher, "computer" teachers included.
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Yeah. Why teach the applications practical to 95% of white collar jobs instead of programming, which most kids won't be interested in, fewer will 'get' and hardly any will ever do professionally?
Because it's horizon-broadening and helps them understand the concepts (mathematics, for starters) behind a spreadsheet better than a spreadsheet user typically has the chance to understand?
Isn't the point here to educate, not push them towards a white collar desk job? Why would anyone want to electively pick something like that when you can make something in home economics, shop, ceramics, photography, etc. or do something in gym, orchestra, etc.? Nobody you'd want to work for you, I imagine.
If you only learn to spell, as opposed to learning speech, reading and literature, you aren't actually doing anything productive.
People who just know how to word process and spreadsheet usually can't do those things worth re-using their output. They're not terribly productive, either: ever see one of these people slave over something for a week which would take a common geek (or even someone smart) an hour or two to do, max?
Besides, I know programming is hardly a glamourous, high paying job, but it sure as hell pays a lot better than being a school teacher.
Not in this market, it doesn't.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
You could say the same about cellular biology, chemistry, quantum mechanics, calculus, and music taught at the high school level. Most people won't professionally develop those skills, but they're better off for having been exposed to the fundamentals. Any maybe out of the breadth of subjects you throw at a young student, they'll find their passion and stick with it. Why exclude programming from that mix?
When programming, you should spend a lot more time thinking than typing. So good typing skills are not necessary at all.
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Yeah. Why teach the applications practical to 95% of white collar jobs instead of programming, which most kids won't be interested in, fewer will 'get' and hardly any will ever do professionally?
These are kids we're talking about, not job trainees. I agree that programming is probably useless to teach if you were trying to teach them a professional skill, but it's more about teaching them how to use their brain. I was never taught spreadsheets, word processing, or Power Point, yet I did all of these things on a daily basis once I graduated. I was taught how to USE a computer, how to think like a software developer, and most importantly how to teach myself new things using the resources around me.
If I were teaching the class, I'd give them all the necessary tools to learn. And for the final exam, I'd make them perform a few basic tasks in a program they've never seen before. THAT is how I determine if someone knows how to use a computer. Not how good they are at making spreadsheets. Anyways, these are the rambling thoughts of someone that has to train people everyday on software they were supposed to know when they were hired....
Because we're discussing general education, not trade school?
At the very least, the foundation in logical thought required for programming would be a boon to general education.
Personally, I think students should receive instruction in both programming, and in business applications. They are two very different subjects, and I don't think it should be an either/or situation.
The kind of literary analysis I did in high school wasn't doing anything productive, either -- but the critical analysis skills I developed doing those exercises were very important for me to learn. Just as ancillary skills to programming (logic, etc) are very important for people to learn.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
One of the big reasons is because work involving computers is highly overvalued, and teachers are highly undervalued. I know that won't be a popular POV on Slashdot, but it's sadly true. Anyone who is even remotely competent as a programmer can pull down amounts of money that make $20,000 - $35,000 a year to start look, well, laughable. The benefits are pretty good, and the vacation time is pretty much unbeatable, but anyone able to understand '>' just isn't likely to bite. Heck, they'd be better off working as the school's IT guy than teaching CS there... a LOT better off.
And it doesn't help matters that CS isn't one of the Big 4, and as such gets shafted right along with other subjects like art and music. One of the best parts about being a teacher is job security and stability... but if you can't even count on that beyond the next time a road needs to be repaved or a school committee member's child comes down with acute spend-a-gazillion-dollars-to-accommodate-me syndrome, then it loses a lot of appeal for decent potential candidates.
For the record, I don't think this is exclusive to CS... journalism, political science, psychology, engineering, and a few others give very little incentive for graduates to take jobs in education. The rewards available from an entry-level job with a basic degree, and the competition for such jobs, simply conspire against it for all but the least competent individuals.
Another reason, and one that probably doesn't help the former, is that we are just now beginning to see a generation of parents, educators, administrators, politicians, etc. who are actually in agreement on the value of technology education. That's the way the power balance is shifting, and demographics ensure that it will inevitably shift completely, but this kind of cultural change takes time. Even now there are a lot of people making decisions about education that will affect students for years to come, who sincerely believe that penmanship is a highly valuable skill warranting a great deal of education and practice (and not just because it is a good exercise for building fine-motor control and hand-eye coordination)... moving ITC beyond "how to open Excel" is just not going to happen overnight.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
They can't teach anything else, most "computer science" teach I had in highschool was almost computer iliterate, shit, I even had a programming teacher in college who was typing with 2 fingers.
Maybe you are just arrogant? It is a common problem among techies, I know I suffered from it in my youth and it did me no favours.
I am now a 36 year old software developer and the big thing I have learnt is how little I know. This is the same in many fields though since each answer always brings with it more questions. The best advice I can give you is to queitly learn as much as you can. Even though your teachers might know nothing about what you think they should know about, you be damn sure they know something and you never know when that something might be useful.
PS - I still type with 2 fingers as I am not willing to take the short term hit on productivity in order to change the habit of the last 27 years (I learnt to code on the ZX Spectrum, not great code granted but it was a start)
I dont read
Probably a majority of US students dislike math and science classes because they are viewed as "hard". Since they are usually college entrance requirements and computer science usually is not, they are less avoidable in practice.
"how to use spreadsheets, word processors and PowerPoint" are not Computing classes or computing skills. They are examples of office skills and should be classified as Business Courses.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
\For almost anything now there are commercial apps which can do whatever you do faster better and at a level of generality you would never imagine.\
That's such BS, there are tons of tools (even commercial tools) which REQUIRE programming ability to make the most of. Take matlab, yes, most of it's features are technically available through the GUI, but if you want to do anything at all interesting with it (like, let's say, multivariate analysis of fMRI data), I think you'd be hard pressed (it would be impossible) to do it without writing a program to do it.
It seems to me that you attitude is the real problem, yeah I could do it in excel with clicky buttons, or I could write a python script that does 10 times more 10 times faster. Not to mention that if someone learns how to program, learning baby stuff like excel and power point won't even require classes.
I recently tought a bunch of psych kids how to write some matlab to run their experiments and analyze their data (see sassy fMRI comment above) and It seems ridiculous that anyone could hope to be any sort of exciting scientist without the ability to at least to some simple data handling in a scripting language.
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I totally empathize with the failed assignment. I had a similar problem at one point.
Though looking back, it does teach a valuable lesson. Make sure that your product reflects all the initial design requirements. If a customer gives you a design requirement and you ignore it, that's a problem.
2005: I would start with Ruby, then most people would never need to learn another language. A small minority would want to learn C, but those would be specialists.
2002: I would start with PHP, then most people would never need to learn another language. A small minority would want to learn C, but those would be specialists.
1999: I would start with Perl, then most people would never need to learn another language. A small minority would want to learn C, but those would be specialists.
The problem of educational technique is only 1/2 the problem, at best. The real problem, just like in the rest of the sciences, is working conditions. As long as it's OK to call people "geek" to their face and pay them shite, most smart kids will continue to gravitate towards business degrees because that's where the money and respect are to be found. No hard science job pays as much as the manager that they answer to, as long as that situation remains so will low enrollment.
Computers were fun back when the reward was worth the effort. Poking data into the display buffer, writing short bits of code in machine language to open the door of CD drive -- the direct connection between software and hardware -- that's what I liked.
Today the best way to do that is probably to build a robot or some other sort of embedded system. Watching your Lego-bot roll around the floor and respond to input according to your rules is a lot more engaging than calling Qt to put up a button or OpenGL to draw a square.
It's obvious pretty quickly that 'Hello World' isn't exactly the door to Narnia.
Luck you. The "Computer Science" teacher in my high school was actually a math teacher. She actually had the gumption to BAN any kid in the labs who knew more than she did.
Her justification to the principal - and I am not making this up - was that she was afraid "one of them will change something and I won't know how to change it back."
I eventually wound up being a TA for one of my other teachers, helping run one of the educational programs for a foreign language class (Stupid Math Bitch couldn't read the program's text to know how to start it).
"Education" in the US is generally retarded. It doesn't help first that we have a "teach to the level of the slowest retard" (thanks, "no child left behind" laws) mentality, and it REALLY doesn't help that our teachers are paid such shitty wages and required to endure such useless ongoing certification and "continuing education" crap that the vast majority of intelligent people won't go anywhere near the field.
I don't blame the intelligent people for staying out of the field. Being a teacher in America is like signing your own death sentence, you get to work incredibly shitty hours, good luck scheduling a vacation, NO support when you have to deal with troublemaker brats whose parents haven't taught them manners, NO support for removing said troublemakers from the classroom so the rest of the kids can learn, and no support in managing to get the slowest of the slow into their own classes so that the rest of the class isn't spending all day asleep waiting as you spend the 12th straight day trying to get the retards to catch on to what the rest picked up in five minutes.
I wish I was exaggerating but I'm not.
The status of teachers in the US is simple: how do you educate kids when the only teachers you can get have to somehow be smart enough to be able to impart not just knowledge but the concept of learning to the kids, and at the same time, they have to be dumb-shit insane enough to sign up to be teachers in the US with all that comes with it?
If you had a class called "Intro to C" (as opposed to something like a hardware and compilers class that incidentally involves using C), your college sucked anyway.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Typing and spreadsheets aren't even "computer science", FFS. Spreadsheet skills fall under a broader category of "accounting", and typing is an ancient skill that existed before electricity became commonplace.
Computer science. Good grief.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I recently guest-taught a class at the local high school for kids who might be interested in computers.
It was a bit rushed, but in 45 minutes I taught them basic binary counting and how to do XOR. They learned how to flip pennies to create a one-time-pad and transmit unbreakable encrypted messages. The bell rang just after they started decoding, but they walked out of the class still working the logic on their sheet of paper, so I think they were into it. CS can be fun as long as theory is only a tool to enable an application.
Materials: whiteboard, scraps of paper, a handful of pennies.
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OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)