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Programming Education Making A Comeback In Primary Schools
New submitter kyrsjo (2420192) writes "The Economist has an article on how information technology — the real stuff, not just button-pushing — is making its way back to schools across the world. As the article argues: 'Digital technology is now so ubiquitous that many think a rounded education requires a grounding in this subject just as much as in biology, chemistry or physics.' In today's society, teaching computer science in schools is absolutely necessary, and that means getting a real understanding of computers and how they work. That requires working with algorithms and programming, not just learning which buttons to push in the program that the school happened to use."
Children are growing up with tablets now. By the time they get to school they will have become so used to simplistic touchscreen interfaces that teachers might find it challenging to turn their minds to the internals of the computers they use. Philip J. Guo's The Two Cultures of Computing essay (posted to Reddit under the amusing title "How Ya Gonna Get 'Em Down on UNIX After They've Seen Spotify?") is obviously the result of clumsy and unprepared teachers, but even better-trained educators might face the same challenge.
I wonder if teaching CS basics might not be better with pen-and-paper exercises in the beginning, where students are less likely to compare what they are doing to the interfaces they are used to. I loved working with Friedman's The Little Schemer , which I discovered well into adulthood, that teaches one the Lisp philosophy of recursion without every needing to sit in front of a computer. Perhaps children would like such an approach as well, and then by the time you present them with e.g. an actual command line they've already internalized that kind of thinking.
How about some critical thinking skills to go along with that programming class? They compliment each other and both can have lasting effects on young minds.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Understanding computers in one thing. Understanding how to program them is something else entirely.
My 17 month old understands my iPad, sort of, and has done for a few months. She can unlock the device, page through it to find the couple of apps she likes, fire them up and interact with them. On my laptop she knows ho to use the trackpad and left-click on buttons. I have no idea where she will be computer-wise by the time she's in first grade, but one thing seems sure, she will know how to use one.
But programming is not necessary to understand how to use a computer, no more than being able to repair your car's brakes is necessary to use a car. In some fairly rare circumstances extremely useful, but not something that NEEDS to be learned to be a good driver - mostly it's sufficient to know how to use the brakes.
By all means, offer programming classes, but don't require people to take them to graduate. Attempting to learn programming if your mind doesn't work the right way (detail oriented, highly logical) would be torture indeed. Understanding how to use them should be sufficient for most people.
I know a *lot* of kids in primary through middle school are really into playing Minecraft. Several schools in the area have started experimenting with not only teaching fundamentals of coding using Minecraft, but also using it to teach other subjects like math or physics.
It reminds me a bit of when I was in school in the 80's, how the LOGO programming language was often used as an intro to programming. You're not going to go out and develop a useful piece of software just from learning how to code in LOGO, just as learning to do custom mods in the world of Minecraft has limited utility elsewhere. But the concepts and basic skills translate.
While we're at it, let's teach toddlers to read and write before they learn to speak. The people who write this drivel know more about writing click-bait than they do about developmental psychology.
Besides the fact that all of these courses are just a waste of time, since schools only teach to the test and have students memorize information and patterns? Personally, dropping out and self-educating would have been a better use of my time, or homeschooling.
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Discrete math to be precise. People laugh when you tell them a college class taught venn diagrams and truth tables. But those are the fundamentals to programming, the things that, no matter how many languages somebody knows, determine the soundness of the program. Those are the concepts that allow someone to transform a real-world problem into a solution the computer can solve.
The rest is just syntax.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."