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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."
Kentucky: English Language = Foreign Language
foreign to Kentucky. sure, go ahead. HS degrees are so valuable.
Technical salaries paid by the Commonwealth of Kentucky are approximately 40% below the regional market average. Perhaps the state senator should check with the state HR department.
I want to mock kentucky, because it's the right thing to do, but this actually kind of makes some sense.
Good to know if I ever need a federal government job...
Sheesh.
This is either someone trying to beat the system, or perhaps the system beating itself to some degree. Why is the plain meaning of "foreign language" in an English-speaking country even up for debate?
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Only 2.4% percent, well yeah ... it's only CS people. Since when did technology development only depend on CS graduates? Last I checked, there are more and more focus/applied degrees every year which would probably take care of a good number of those positions. Not every job needs a theoretical background, and all of those job postings for "App Developers" probably don't require a hardcore degree a this point ...
Technical salaries paid by the Commonwealth of Kentucky are approximately 40% below the regional market average.
Not as bad as all that when considered within the context of the cost of living in Kentucky.
For example, consider what $300,000 will buy you for a house in Kentucky (and many other Southern states) verses in Western Washington State where I live. I, Puget Sound, $300K will buy me a two bedroom "fixer-upper" next to a crack house.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
My highschool required 3 years of a foreign language to graduate, 0 of which I had any interest in, and only 1 (the first) had any real-life applicability (spending a week in Mexico City).
Effectively, for me, two of those courses were a completely forced waste of time.
Taking more classes on programming/software development would have been much more useful.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
I sucked at Spanish in high school, harder than calculus. I got around language requirements in college via some comparative religion courses (which worked out great as one teacher turned me onto Hermann Hesse, changed my life).
The only problem I see with this change is called it a Foreign Language. If it was Alternative Language I wouldn't see anything wrong with it.
I see learning a programming language, which I assume mean learning some programming, as highly valuable to anyone. If taught properly (I've never seen this), it can provide a solid logic base (and, or, not) and a deeper understanding of decision making (conditionals).
My wife had a total of 8 years of French and spent a semester in Paris. She hasn't used it yet and is no longer very fluent. As for applied knowledge, her spreadsheet skills are good, but she trips up on logic and conditionals.
Why is there a foreign language requirement anyway?
BlameBillCosby.com
I my college accepted my programming languages courses for their foreign language requirement -- and that was nearly 40 years ago. This is actually pretty common, though it goes in and out of fashion every few years.
"AN ACT relating to computer programming languages in public schools. Amend KRS 156.160 to allow computer programming language courses to be accepted as meeting foreign language requirements in the public schools; amend KRS 164.002 to define "computer programming language"; amend KRS 164.4785 to ensure that computer programming language courses be accepted as meeting foreign language requirements for admission to public postsecondary institutions."
I don't get the backlash, especially on a tech site like Slashdot (although the /. crowd is trending more towards the reddit / digg / mouthbreathers these days). HS language courses are the biggest waste of time. Do you actually learn anything in a HS language class? Just enough to recognize the language you are reading, maybe make fun of the weird shit they do in other countries, but definitely not well enough to be able to converse. These classes only exist as justification for rich kids (you know, the ones who /don't/ have to work) to take their annual European summer vacations subsidized on the taxpayer's dime.
A computer programming class makes so much more sense in that it allows people to learn basic logic and process management (as in, breaking down a big problem into smaller modules). This bill just expands the scope of what fills that "language" requirement.
This move makes absolutely perfect sense. Soon, everyone graduating from Kentucky high schools will have above average academic qualifications. Also, the senator is a genius and extremely good looking.
you can live in Kentucky like a god with 300,000 dollars. secondly as a resident and graduate of Kentucky schools i can tell you Kentucky educational requirements are a joke and funding is non existent or wasted. they think it's OK to have your kids in a 50 million dollar building be using textbooks from the 50's. they cut educational funding constantly while the congressmen keep raising their salaries and running off new companies with jobs we desperately need at the request of established players.
Programming a dishwasher is simple, doesn't need much of a language.
Although of course back in the early days of robotics people were thinking of general purpose humanoid style robots doing the household chores, including dishes. (like the Dad in Robots) and it would take some effort to program that task (its mentioned in Heinleins The Door to Summer
Not sure what the deal is with all the hate here in the thread. Isn't the Slashdot groupthink supposed to say that anything that exposes people to computers and programming is a good thing? Even when it's that nonsense of trying to teach primary grade-schoolers to code?
People are a lot less likely to take a computer programming language than they are a foreign language class in high school, but I'd say the computer programming course is more valuable to them. If they take the semester or two of foreign language, they will likely have forgotten it in a couple years from non-practice and even if they did want to study further will be having to start at year one anyway in college. If they never travel to a country where they speak the language what they do learn will be limited usefulness in life. It's another one of those subjects people study to be a more rounded person. But exposure to programming means learning more about computers in general and how to operate them, that means less idiots in offices hitting "reply all" when unnecessary or looking for the "any" key. And even those who decide programming isn't for them will come away with a better understanding (and possibly respect) for those that do go into programming.
Quit forcing me to BETA pages, I'm sick of it.
Log in if you want to avoid the BETA site.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I always wonder what the source and intention of these posts is.
Depends on where you are in Kentucky. Oh, everyone loves the narrative that Kentucky is filled with barefoot overall-wearing good ol' boys with a mason jar of moonshine on the creaky porch with a sprig of wheat coming out of the corner of their mouth, but everyone seems to forget that if you cross a river in Northern Kentucky, you are in the Central Business District of Cincinnati, Ohio; a fairly large city with significant history and home to several Fortune-100 headquarters.
Yes, $300k will go farther than Puget Sound, the Bay Area, LA or New York; but not as far as you would think.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
good luck next time you're in a foreign country trying to buy food using for loops and if statements
Actually, anyone can do just that these days.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Seriously, there had be a "Y'all" joke somewhere.
Or moonshine. Or bluegrass.
Three Squirrels
So what exactly is the problem with Kentucky?
That's a good question. After all, not only does the best Bourbon Whiskey come from there, they produce a wonderful jelly.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
This sounds a lot like the "Pizza is a vegetable" nonsense I remember reading about a few years ago.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I'm ok with this.
The Blade Itself
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 .
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
If you're not learning calculus from Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in the original Latin, you're just taking shortcuts. Begone with you.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
They are just mad that their state abbreviation has become a sex lube.
If you live in a state with abbreviation KY, you deserve to get shafted.
However, anything that promotes the use of computer science and technology to students who are crap at languages (like I was) cannot be that bad.
langs = [
{
"name":"C",
"popularity": 49
},
{
"name":"Java",
"popularity": 53
},
{
"name":"JavaScript",
"popularity":82,
},
{
"name":"Perl",
"popularity": 3
},
{
"name":"PHP",
"popularity":64
},
{
"name":"Python",
"popularity":57
}
];
langs.sort(function(a,b) {
if (a.popularity < b.popularity) { return 1; }
if (a.popularity > b.popularity) { return -1; }
return 0;
});
if (langs[0].name == 'javascript') {
console.log("Tell me about it, seems whenever I go out drinking everyone is speaking in Javascript these days.");
} else {
console.log("Dude, I don't even know what you are saying");
}
Latin is taught in a way much more similar to that which you describe.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
And yet, Latin was offered as a foreign language at my high school...
(You are right that it was sort of "cheating" the requirement, though!)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I know it is popular to mock the Southern US, but lame values of living are relative. I live in rural Southern Alabama, which is probably not much different than rural Kentucky. I have a nice 2 story home overlooking a pond. My morning commute to work is around 20 minutes if you count dropping the kids off at school. I might pass 10 cars during rush hour. I know most of my neighbors for a mile in both directions. When I want to go on a walk in the park, my backyard has 130 acres of pine trees planted. Sure the pay scale is not as much as a similar job in other areas, but neither is the cost of living. What would $70,000/year get you in Chicago?
I have a completely opposite opinion. I think the foreign language requirement is BS. Maybe under the conditions that people who made the requirement were thinking of provided a good enough reason to make that a requirement; however, today that is NOT the case.
At least with programming they will be exposed to logic and having to think differently in a way that is not naturally human. Yes, it's unlikely they'll get proper programming experience to have the desired impact on them, but that already is the case for foreign language education. Thinking in programming code is going to impact them if they get to that skill level; just as a foreign language would. I also think people are too biased into thinking that people can only think in a spoken language - if you could get people to NOT think in a spoken language that would probably do the most.
English education is poor quality. People who used to learn Latin ended up way better off but that was killed in favor of living language -- many of the popular ones are so similar to English that it can't be providing much benefit other than perhaps the way they teach it exposing grammar - which is not really taught. Teaching proper English grammar again with the Latin based-concepts etc would be far more beneficial. They no longer taught grammar when I was in school (it was passive at that point, the teacher would have to correct it for you to even know of a rule... perhaps this approach would work if they made us read a whole lot more; that that didn't happen either.)
Cultures, geography, etc. should be taught (does social studies even exist anymore?) about multiple areas not just the one who's language you are learning (in my case, we learned almost nothing other than stuff we already knew from pop culture on Span or Mexico and I bet you half the students couldn't find Spain on a map and 1/5 wouldn't realize if you renamed Canada Mexico on a map.)
If you REALLY want or need to learn a language -- GO THERE. Everybody admits it is the best way to learn. Americans do not get 1 month vacation per year to travel around Europe; perhaps if they did... they'd at least learn some Spanish or French going short distances. If you want people to think differently by language exposure, pick something DIFFERENT-- like Chinese, not some popular European language.
Ethnocentrism is extremely high in the USA.
I would cover the basics strongly before adding lots of extras - we don't have good English, Math, or Science skills nationally. No, all those studies that cite mixed language exposure helping out leave out the fact that English can be taught in a way that has those benefits without all the wasted time. (It IS a waste when the main purpose is to lean better English-- it's like going across the street by going around the planet... sure you get a nice trip but it takes a long time even if you'd learn some geography...something Americans suck at.)
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$300,000 in will buy a McMansion out in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Shhhhhh! I am OK with people not knowing how beautiful most of the southern US is. If they find out, they will ruin it.
KY jelly you mean?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Mhhh... can someone confirm that the Beta is nothing but some form of punishment for the Anonymous Cowards....
Wasn't it George Gilder who said that the only languages that anyone needed to know to be successful today are English and C++?
So what that Kentucky uses a programming language like BASIC to satisfy their foreign language 'requirement'? It's not like anyone speaks a foreign language in Kentucky. Except Spanish, and the Mexicans aren't going to know the difference between Kentuckians speaking KY_BASIC and KY_Spanish anyway.
10 ? "I'm smart, educated, trained, and ready for world-class productivity employment"
20 Goto 10
Was it Bill Gates who invented using the question mark as the PRINT token? If I recall correctly, he personally brought back to life the BASIC language by writing assembly language interpreters for every microprocessor available in the 1970s. Does he speak any foreign language?
(just as it's reasonable for Georgians to assume Athens, Georgia instead of Athens, Greece -- but they all damn well know the Greece version exists!)
However, most Americans will assume you are talking about Georgia in the United States when someone mentions Georgia, and will not know there is a Georgia in Eastern Europe.
Oh, everyone loves the narrative that Kentucky is filled with barefoot overall-wearing good ol' boys with a mason jar of moonshine on the creaky porch with a sprig of wheat coming out of the corner of their mouth
It's your own fault for coming up to New York with a banjo and picking up girls in Washington Square Park with your Kentucky accent and hillbilly stories.
My girlfriend clued me in that those stories they tell about screwing sheep are strictly for the benefit of credulous city boys.
Thinking it will get you a 6 block section in Detroit, but I haven't checked the prices lately. Mind you it's a bit of a fixer upper project.
You never know...
Because it be considered incomprehensible gibberish, not a programming language.
suspect that it may be baysian poisoning, but they might be search string keys for NSA metatag searches. (Whether the submitter knows that or not.)
You never know...
Sorry, but I've seen rural Alabama and rural Kentucky. From my experience, Kentucky's doing significantly better.
Your ignorance answered the question as to why it's still mandatory.
If I'm ignorant, then you are in trouble since I'm the one supporting your assertion.
I never said language courses should not be mandatory. Just that it was OK to wrap them together with programming courses.
If you can't parse that, well then I'm not sure you should be throwing the word "ignorant" around so vigorously as it's swinging back a little too close there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Being in Chicago, for one. ;)
Different strokes, but right now I'm in the middle of nowhere and it's fine if you have little interest in people, or entertainment, or restaurants, or a good variety of groceries, or having walking be a realistic daily mode of daily transport, or many other things. And of course the politics are more conservative, even though most of the people would at least be better off financially under liberals. The only reason I'm not going bonkers from this lifestyle is that I'm caught up in working (and it's work I enjoy), I still get out to do exercise several times a week, and I plan on leaving eventually.
In Chemistry graduate school we were allowed to apply a computer language to our two "foreign" languages requirement... in 1985.
Quebec is only an hour or two by aeroplane from Kentucky. Though most Canadians I met, even in neighbouring Ontario, regarded learning French as a waste of time since the Quebecois all know English anyway.
There's got to be a fried chicken joke in there some where.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
To let students heading to comp sci have a break.
The requirements are there, aka the system. To beat the system, aka break the rules for some, the debate is not about whether it is a foreign language. It is about waiving the requirement, which means filling a requirement with a substitute.
No one, other than you and people like you who like to overreact by taking things out of context, is saying that code is a foreign language.
I would prefer to focus on the $60k starting salary that will not exist for nearly anyone involved. And, why coding is more important than multicultural learning and basically brain calisthenics. Why the need?
Then the answer is simple. Change the hard requirement if it sucks instead of gaming the system via a metaphor.
When I went to school sport was not quite compulsory in senior. It could be exchanged for an afternoon at a tech college learning how to program the Z80.
Now stop for a moment and think: Why don't we have any people who are doctors in every field of study?
Interestingly, long ago the volume of knowledge was such that a single human could easily contain all of it -- or certainly enough to be considered an expert in everything. As your society progresses the amount of knowledge and information out paces your capability to know everything, and so you must specialize your knowledge and skills to continue advancement. It's a double edged sword: Science has no true divisions; The universe is unified. Overspecialization can leave you just as blind, but you must make do with the brains you've come into sentience with... for now.
Who is more of a hillbilly? The one who still thinks that human heads can store and apply infinite knowledge, or the one who realizes the relatively new field of computer science plus at least one programming language has a greater cognitive load than learning another culture's language? In the Age of Information where nearly every device has computational capacity, is it more advantageous to learn to speak multiple human languages or learn to communicate with machines? I guess it would depend on whether one plans on being a troglodyte or not.
Tell me, human, do you think it is more efficient to learn multiple human languages, or to standardize on one? Before you answer, consider that if you want to be a programmer you practically must learn English first. However, if you already know English...
In the University of California system 50+ years ago, a PhD candidate had to pass proficiency tests in TWO foreign languages. In the 1960s, that requirement was modified to allow the candidate to substitute a computer language for one of the foreign languages.
After two weeks you might think you've learned that programming language. To all your friends who don't know any better it looks like you're some kind of cultured genius. But to anyone who actually knows and works with the language you will appear to be a lost tourist constantly checking a guidebook.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Scrap foreign language and fractions. Just teach em how to flip burgers. Chinese is incredibly useful BTW. The consumer base there is growing and no doubt if you know Chinese and English there is a good job waiting for you.
At what age do we decide who takes what route in specialized education? At what age should general education turn into specialized education? I think grade 12 is a good end point for general education, what about you? If the previous generation could get both a foreign language credit and a mathematics/logic credit why can't todays generation? They managed to become engineers in a specific field. Yes there are more specialized fields to chose from but why does it matter? Its scalable. Or are you suggesting too much general knowledge is being crammed into the k-12 curriculum?
My sheep clued me in that those stories they tell on Slashdot about girlfriends are strictly for the benefit of credulous basement-dwellers.
No left turn unstoned.
It's interesting to see how few people say that foreign languages come with foreign cultures.
American people (as a whole) are known for their lack of knowledge about the rest of the world.
Just because we use the term 'language' in "computer language" doesn't mean it's a real language.
Allowing people to learn a CS language instead of a real human language removes the little chance some people have to actually learn about other cultures.
(As I said above, I'm speaking about the US as a whole, of course a lot of people have more knowledge than that, but I'm sure you can easilly quote a few politicians, even presidents who couldn't tell their ass from their feet even geographically wise)
On average you'll find that the same work pays as good or better in a more expensive area (maybe better because for a lot of careers the "big" companies that can afford more competitive salaries are often in the city). So in most cases, your major costs (housing, food) should be the same percentage of your salary because your pay is adjusted for the area. However, national things like books, clothes, music, furniture, cars, airfare, etc. all cost the same wherever you live, so they'll be "cheaper" for you if you live in a more expensive town.
Put another way, 70k in Alabama is probably more like 110k in Chicago. You could pretty easily pull a 350k house on that salary, which gets you a nice 3-bedroom in a quiet neighborhood (according to a quick search). And now a new car is now 27% of your yearly salary, rather than 43% so you can upgrade almost twice as often (or buy more books, go on more vacations, or just save more).
That's not to mention all the cultural opportunities you give up living in Alabama instead of Chicago. I'm sure Alabama has some nice countryside, and I know it's not all Deliverance-style back-country. But it can't compete with Chicago in terms of world-class theater, museums, symphony, cinema, or restaurants either.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
we all know what Kentucky thinks about foreigners.
Shouldn't the subject be: Programming Language == Foreign Language ??
Esperanto estas la solvo - it solves the problem. It's not a foreign language as everyone owns it, not just foreigners; and not a computer language although it shares logical construction, 'beauty' and ease of use like the best programming languages; it is a blend of both. As for foreign languages teaching "mental dexterity" so does learning the Periodic table. Learning languages involves hours of practise with memorising ability being paramount; a skill difficult for many people. If all youngsters were taught in their native language and also one agreed simple international language such as Esperanto they'd have lots of memory space and time left to memorise important stuff in Science and Engineering. After all the human brain has only so much capacity before it decides it wants to go out and play.
Brilliant, so American tourists visiting Jacarta are at least able to speak Java, now.
Isn't it funny that a lot of people reading and discussing this submission are only capable of doing so because they learned a foreign language at school?
Learning languages involves hours of practise with memorising ability being paramount; a skill difficult for many people.
I've always been terrible at memorization but I managed to learn Thai and Spanish and several computer languages. Names, dates, phone numbers... I'm glad they invented smartphones so I no longer have to remember numbers.
I never saw the utility of Esperanto, since nobody speaks it.
Free Martian Whores!
My daughter lives in Cincinnati and works in a GameStop in Kentucky. Her description of he customers pretty much fits the stereotype, meth heads selling used (probably stolen) games, women in rags bring children in rags in and buying a brand new Playstation and the expensive games that go with them...
Free Martian Whores!
Maybe you could get rid of history, too.
I mean, it's not a job skill - what job do you need history for?
Is 2 credits enough to make any kind of a real world difference?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
You could live pretty well in Kentucky on 60k/year. I did alright (10 years ago) on that in the Philly suburbs. My wife and I lived on that exclusively for a number of years, saving 100% of her salary. Of course, we lived in a 2-bedroom apartment and didn't have shiny new cars.
More native programmers doesn't necessarily mean lower salaries - right now we import people from all over the world via the H1B visa program. Even in the recession, we brought in over 100,000 H1B folks every year. Not all comp sci, but there you go.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Haha yeah slashdot lets bash all the stupid poor farmers and make fun of them because all those idiots in fly over states are unworthy! On the other hand, students everywhere might get more use of 2 years of C++ or php than 2 years of Spanish. I know I would have used programming more in college and everyday life than Spanish, and if you need Spanish in everyday life you're going to learn it whether its taught in school or not.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Homework:
1) Use $COMPUTER_LANG to ask for directions to the bathroom
2) Use $COMPUTER_LANG to order dinner at a restaurant
3)Use $COMPUTER_LANG to extend an indecent proposal to a member of the appropriate sex.
Can't do? Then it ain't a language. Calling computer code "language" is just a convention to make colloquial speech easier.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I've spoken with plenty of rural Kentucky natives who explained that they had mixed feelings about going back home during breaks in the University of Kentucky school year due to the attitude they get back home. Attitudes like - "You think you are so much better than us" and "if our town isn't good enough for you, you can just stay away, traitor".
There are HUGE psychological barriers to overcome to the extent that only the strongest-willed can work their way out of the poverty cycle. I can understand the perspective that a foreign language requirement just adds to the challenges. Realistically, it would be rare to find a capable teacher for any foreign language in these communities.
The "flexibility" that is mentioned in TFA is to allow these communities to use limited resources to get some of these kids to college. In certain communities the default expectation is education post high school, but in others the expectation is the disability/welfare dole. This expectation is found in both rural and urban communities with limited resources and limited local opportunity.
It's Latin with the grammar took out.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
>our major costs (housing, food) should be the same percentage of your salary
Not true according to economic theory. If a company could move to Alabama and reduce costs, they would. So for the most part the average payroll should be similar, just the majority of employees are willing to pay more for the privlege of living in the big city. My company gives me cost of living to move me, mostly because its more there desire. It can also be the few drag many. IE if a CEO worth 25M won't move from chicago for any amount, having to pay 50 lower people 40,000 more may still lower the overall payroll (or fill a payroll that couldn't be filled elsewhere.)
iTranslate needs an internet connection to work. When you are abroad that means either renting a local SIM or roaming charges.
Or just being on TMobile.
Or renting a mobile hotspot at the airport.
I didin't have any issues with network when I went to Japan.
Is there a port of Google Translate for iOS?
There are also plenty of offline translators available for iOS, especially if you are just talking dictionary...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"despite a high demand in the market and jobs that start with $60,000 salaries"
These things go hand in hand, let's keep it that way.
A programming language is technically not a "language" at all. The word "language" is used as a sort of nickname for what programming really is. That's like giving physical education credits for "web surfing" just because it has the word "surfing" in it, or biology/entomology credit for debugging just because it has the word "bug" in it.
Oh, really? Maybe that has to do with the attitude people have towards public services. There are world class public schools in the US, but by in large they aren't in places like Kentucky.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I've lived in both the Valley and Kentucky.
Which valley? There's more than one, you know, and which one is simply called "the Valley" depends on where you are. Out here, The Valley generally refers to the San Fernando Valley.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Poor != "incompetent to speak"
Ethnicity also != "incompetent to speak"
Language is that tool which we use to communicate the vast majority of what's important. Figuratively speaking, you can paint beautifully with it, employing nuance and mastery, or you can draw crude stick figures like an addled child, finger painting. Deep patois may provide that warm and fuzzy feeling of being a member of a regional clique, but it directly isolates the speaker from everyone else, and that is not a good thing.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Ahem. Repeat after me:
From Latin per se (“by itself”), from per (“by, through”) and se (“itself, himself, , herself, themselves")
Far too simplistic an example to make your case. Language can indeed cue culture. Spend a little time here to get a taste of some surface examples.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Training drones, rather than educated, well-rounded citizens
To serve only self is the ultimate slavery.
Ethnic discrimination isn't cool just because they're poor, asshole.
No bias against the Kentuckinese.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Haha yeah slashdot lets bash all the stupid poor farmers and make fun of them because all those idiots in fly over states are unworthy! On the other hand, students everywhere might get more use of 2 years of C++ or php than 2 years of Spanish. I know I would have used programming more in college and everyday life than Spanish, and if you need Spanish in everyday life you're going to learn it whether its taught in school or not.
Seems like you could have benefited from many things, m ore than 2 years of Spanish. the Monty Python Argument Clinic, for instance.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Honestly, I went to a high school with over 1000 other students. I believe about 800 took spanish and the remaining 200 or so too French, Italian or German. The average student studied their second language for 3 years, some as many as 5. Of those students, less than 10 percent can communicate on a vacation to another country where those languages are spoken. Probably less than 2% became fluent. And yet, most of them graduated with good grades in those languages.
Second languages should be optional and should be a major boost on college applications. But to be fair, it's a waste of millions and maybe billions of dollars to educate in a topic which less people can perform well in than they do in mathematics.
The rest of the country's students with only grade 12 did just fine. I know because I went to school in Ontario from Nova Scotia with only grade 12. About the only difference is that I did curriculum about a year earlier in some cases, and didn't have an opportunity to get credit/skip some intro courses.
Anyway, I would say for those few students that want to excel, they could take advantage of grade 13, but for most I suspect it was simply a crutch to limp along at a more retarded pace.
Desire works the other way too. More employees are available in the city because people want to live there, so the company has to go where the people are. And there are likely many companies competing for employees in the same field, so they have to pay competitive wages, which people generally view as accounting for cost of living.
Anyway, theory aside, the trend right now in a lot of fields is for there to be a marked cost of living differential reflected in salaries. A job that would pay 60k in Des Moines, IA pays 100k+ in any city on the west coast, and more like 120k-130k in NYC.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Apparently this was done after declaring cyber space a foreign country.
They certainly did not follow systematic thinking, or know what internal documentation is. Some of it appeared to not only be spaghetti code, but written to become a mobius strip. OTOH to call a computer language a foreign language is ridiculous. They may be foreign to their way of thinking, but in no way do they meet the definition of a foreign language.