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Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding
theodp (442580) writes "The NY Times reports that the national educational movement in computer coding instruction is growing at Internet speeds. 'There's never been a move this fast in education,' said Elliot Soloway, a professor of education and computer science at the Univ. of Michigan. But, cautions the NY Times' Matt Richtel, it is not clear that teaching basic computer science in grade school will beget future jobs or foster broader creativity and logical thinking, as some champions of the movement are projecting. And particularly for younger children, the activity is more like a video game — better than simulated gunplay, but not likely to impart actual programming skills. 'Some educators worry about the industry's heavy role,' adds Richtel. 'Major tech companies and their founders, including Bill Gates and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, have put up about $10 million for Code.org,' which recently announced its CS programs will be rolled out to more than 2 million students — nearly 5% of all U.S. K-12 students — at 30 school districts this fall. Among the 20,000 teachers who Code.org says have signed on is Alana Aaron, a fifth-grade math and science teacher who, with her principal's permission, swapped a two-month earth sciences lesson she was going to teach on land masses for the Code.org curriculum. 'Computer science is big right now — in our country, the world,' she said. 'If my kids aren't exposed to things like that, they could miss out on potential opportunities and careers.'"
It seems to me if you add coding to math curriculum, it would enhance both. In my high school during the '80's, boolean logic was not discussed at all, nor were principles like recursion, numerical approximation, and general algorithms. If those were added to algebra, geometry, and shown how computers help solve normally unsolvable problems (e.g. the simple pendulum without the law of sines approximation), the students understanding of both math and computer science would synergistically increase.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
having educators and scientists leading our education system using what has been proven to work
Where is the "proof" that what we are doing works? I live in California, and the three big things the "educators" are pushing are 1) Common Core, 2) Credentialed Teachers, and 3) Smaller classes. Here is the number of controlled studies that I have seen that show that that "Common Core" is effective: 0. Teachers with education credentials have been found to be LESS effective than teachers with degrees in other subjects. Teachers with advanced degrees in education, have found to have NO improvement over teachers with bachelors degrees in education (both are inferior). Lastly, there is astonishingly little evidence to show that smaller classes improve student performance, considering the billions spent on implementing them. Smaller class sizes have been shown to be beneficial in only narrow circumstances, specifically poorly performing students in lower grades. And in even then, there is some evidence that the real benefit is quieter classrooms rather than smaller classes. For brighter kids, the smaller classes often reduce performance, because they are more likely to be compelled to follow along with the class, rather than read ahead. So please tell us, where is the evidence that educators are using what has been "proven to work"?
This topic comes up once a quarter, or so. I agree with the gent above suggesting 'Chess' but in a different way. Teach the original abstract, not the implementation. If we've time and room in the curriculum, teach the kids logic. This will let them code, play chess, think, reason and analyze no matter what the end up doing for a crust in later life.
And 'Critical thinking' - which someone had taught me that at Scumbag High. I had to work a lot of it out myself in later life. With Critical thinking around, we'd have a lot less homeopaths, psychics, spiritualists, gamblers...
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Yeah. And as astonishing as it may sound, "journalist", "writer", "photo reporter", "editor", "typesetter", "lector" and "printer" used to be different people instead of one.
Time changes. Automatism does away with jobs, either eliminating them or offering enough automatism that it can be handled by someone who doesn't have 3+ years of training in it.
Works in all kinds of trades.
We're still far from when bricklayers may design houses because static has become trivial.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.