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Kentucky: Programming Language = Foreign Language
jackb_guppy writes with word that "Legislation that would let students use computer programming courses to satisfy foreign-language requirements in public schools moved forward in the Kentucky Senate on Thursday." From the article: "Kentucky students must earn 22 credits to graduate high school, but 15 of those credits represent requirements for math, science, social studies and English — and college prerequisites call on students to have two credits of foreign language, [state senator David] Givens said.
Meanwhile, Givens pointed to national statistics showing that less than 2.4 percent of college students graduate with a degree in computer science despite a high demand in the market and jobs that start with $60,000 salaries."
Pretty much spot on.
I'm sure the research scientist or business major that learns a great deal about applied computer usage, including some aspect of programming, need never pass by a CS classroom or know Donald Knuth from Donald Duck. Similarly, those students that get into hardware infrastructure don't need a great deal of programming either.
Still, the bill seems more aimed at allowing people to get out of high school without ever once encountering a Spanish word not written on a menu, than actually growing the computer literacy in the state.
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It really depends. I took Latin for 4 years. Though it is of no real applicable use to me at this time, it was a really great base for learning Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese. Those languages came really easy to me because of the Latin. The backlash I have with this is, the law should be that kids need 2 credits in programming AND 2 credit in a foreign language instead of this malarky.
Which entirely misses the point of a broad education.
Taking programming courses is every bit as broadening as taking a language course. Just in different dimensions.
Indeed I would hazard to say you would retain more overall from a programming course than one or two semesters of a language course.
In no way are we dumbing down people allowing them to study computers more in depth over language.
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Maybe, but good luck next time you're in a foreign country trying to buy food using for loops and if statements.
You're being modded "funny" but I think you deserve "insightful".
I'm an old fart, but I really don't like the recent trend in colleges - and now high schools - where we're apparently moving towards a completely utilitarian education and away from attempting to develop well-rounded individuals and citizens.
It's not all about money and what kind of job you have.
And I must admit... I wonder if we nerds are at least partially to blame. Engineers and computer geeks often tend towards an almost Aspergers-like tunnel vision.
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Granted, Kentucky is not representative of the whole US, but a perfect example of how we repetitively embarrass ourselves internationally.
Most of the world is multilingual. Learning another language provides skills unrelated to coding. In addition to the obvious benefit of communication, it provides the student with a wider vocabulary and the ability to basically know the meaning of many, many new words they may hear while studying, without the use of a dictionary.
How many Europeans know only one language? How many Indians or Chineese? Virtually none that have education.
We've carried the big stick for too long, if you can't see that you need to have the ability to play internationally, you'll be stuck with a Kentucky education and sadly ignorant .
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That's a very valid point, but what I remember of modern language teaching at school (French in my case) was very utilitarian. Just lots of vocabulary, conjugation rules etc. to memorise - all how to speak the language but very little as to why you'd want to bother and little of intellectual interest. Latin was better, in that we actually looked at examples of Latin literature and poetry and the Roman civilisation. Shame the language was much harder, with all the noun declensions and so forth.
All a bit of a waste really, as there's a lot of interesting things to learn about languages. The scientific side - how they evolve over time, how various languages relate to each other - cognate words, sounds shifts etc. And the literary/cultural side for those that way inclined.
In any case, I can't see anything that programming languages have in common with natural languages besides the word "language".
The ability to speak multiple languages, to some degree at least, is commonplace around the world. Monolingualism seems particularly severe in Anglosphere countries (including my own).
In Australia there's been a move away from teaching European languages in favour of the languages of Asia from the trade perspective. It's also a shorter duration to fly to Japan (whose language my brother's kids are learning) than the 20 or so hours to fly from Melbourne to Vienna or Paris.
In 25 years the Baby Boomers will be just as influential as they are now. But there will be a lot fewer of them around.
The English language is not dying. In fact, it is the fastest growing language in the world. When Finnish businessmen sell telephones to Indonesia in exchange for tropical wood lumber and spices, no one speaks Finnish or Indonesian. They speak English.
Also note that in 25 years, when people who only speak English need to communicate with peasants that only speak legacy languages, they will smile gracefully and speak into a microphone and their personal-translator unit will reproduce their translated words into that legacy language.
It's not that difficult to learn sufficient Spanish as an adult. About one third of the vocabulary is cognitively identical to English. Its grammar is functionally similar to all the other Romance languages. The Romance linguistic framework is not hard for people who have learned English in a structured school environment, because other Romance language speakers (the French and the Normans) ruled England for hundreds of years in the Middle Ages and set the grammar rules that continue to be used to this day.
Let me add just a bit to your comment on Spanish. Spanish is the single easiest commonly used, spoken language an American can learn. It has a TINY vocabulary (you can claim fluency knowling well less than 10,000 words). There are native speakers all around you who love talking to English speakers in Spanish (not only is it hilarious, the English speakers are buying things and helping them makes them repeat customers). It's actually USEFUL, and you can start putting it to good use right away in almost any state. Try that with German! And then there's what you said.
ASL is also dead-easy, but it's not spoken, per se, not really written, and only useful in deaf schools. That said, you lean ASL and you can pick up other SLs accross the globe faster than anyone can pick up a new spoken language, and there's deaf folk in every country.