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Microsoft, Facebook Declare European Kids Clueless About Coding, Too
theodp writes: Having declared U.S. kids clueless about coding, Facebook and Microsoft are now turning their attention to Europe's young 'uns. "As stewards of Europe's future generations," begins the Open Letter to the European Union Ministers for Education signed by Facebook and Microsoft, "you will be all too aware that as early as the age of 7, children reach a critical juncture, when they are learning the core life skills of reading, writing and basic maths. However, to flourish in tomorrow's digital economy and society, they should also be learning to code. And many, sadly, are not." Released at the launch of the European Coding Initiative — aka All You Need is Code! (video) — in conjunction with the EU's Code Week, the letter closes, "As experts in our field, we owe it to Europe's youth to help equip them with the skills they will need to succeed — regardless of where life takes them."
Natural market forces would have given them the same glut of CS graduates that the 1999 bubble did.
The only competent coders in the world are the ones who will work for $8/hour.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Translation: We need to flood the job market so we can hire cheaper workers. Is anyone actually buying this?
Of course they are saying that. According to these huge multinationals, the only ones who are not clueless are always conveniently the ones from countries who will accept dirt cheap wages. Funny how that works out.
Maybe we should explain how social structure works, and how human desires come into play when mixed with it - rather than teach them how to operate machines.
...oh yeah, the adults have to learn that first...
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
As a former European kid, can I declare Microsoft clueless about coding too?
These 7 yr olds need to learn to EAT THEIR BROCCOLI!
Oops, forgot... parents around the world have already been doing that forever.
You can't exactly nurture a consumer based economy to support your profits, then complain that it's not producing enough builders.
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When I was 7, computers were something with lights you saw on Star Trek. I didn't start coding until I was in my teens. And this was when coding was hard work. Not like the spoon-fed coding environments you get now.
Yet I manage.
Dear Europe and America ...
From the Christian Alliance for World Dominance: Your young ones need to learn our stuff.
From the Muslim Alliance for World Dominance: Your young ones need to learn our stuff.
From the Fossil Fuel Alliance for World Dominance: Your young ones need to learn our stuff.
From the Science Alliance for World Dominance: Your young ones need to learn our stuff.
From the Welding Alliance for World Dominance: Your young ones need to learn our stuff. ...
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Whatever happened to teaching the kids the fundamentals of math and logic, never mind reading comprehension? Guess what? All of that is far more important to learning to code than the actual code itself. I find it ironic to imply that the kids are lost if they don't start to learn actual code that young. When I started programming, computers weren't even really available to anyone. I had good knowledge of math and logic, and was able to figure it out on my own over 35 years ago, and keep up with 'all of the latest trends' and have quite a successful career.
What I learned that help me do this, was how to learn. Start teaching that, and you will find they are prepared for whatever comes down the line in the future. Stop making automatons.....
Jim
I can definitely appreciate the value of some skills that fall under 'coding', some logic, thinking about breaking down problems in a rigorous way, gaining the ability to make a computer do boring stuff programmatically rather than one-by-one by hand.
However, my understanding(both in personal experience and from what I've read on the subject) is that actually-good, especially actually-really-scary-good, programmers have to be born and then polished, and that just throwing more practice at the unsuited doesn't actually improve them as much as you'd hope.
Is the theory that current education, lacking in CS, is failing to identify promising candidates? That we should be ensuring more suitable people go into CS rather than other areas that require similar talents? That the world really needs more rote-learned java monkeys to keep wages safely low?
Why is it that when I hear of children coding, all I can think of is 'The Carver' from the show Silicon Valley? They'll work for adderall and mountain dew! (which I am sure most corporations would love).
As to the premise of the article, I call BS that you need to start coding by age 7 or you'll be behind. Trying to teach most 7 year olds something as abstract as coding won't get you very far. You are better off trying to teach them logic games instead. And honestly, I didn't actually like coding until my 20's.
My company has been trying to hire the 12 year old and younger set because they are cheap but out of all the ones we've interviewed they can't pass the technical phase of the interview process.
Out of desperation we've been forced to hire CS and EE college grads that learned how to code as undergrads. They're ok. They typically know C, Java, Python, and such but we have still not found a candidate that has 2+ years experience writing device drivers in Scratch.
Learn coding, do work for some huge corporation, slave away, and not actually own anything you produce for the company... very glamorous...
In the late 70's and early 80's in the US, you could go into a big box store and buy a computer with BASIC for under $200. Heck, the Sinclair boxes were under a $100. Which computer fits that description today?
And I'll bet the less they earn the better they are...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
...in a systems or software engineer is one that's not taught, and that's the drive to tinker, to figure out why something does what it does.
Everything else -- programming languages, systems design, best practices and processes, etc. -- can be taught to someone with the drive to tinker and learn. Really, corporations should be doing less of the "let's teach the world to code" crap, and do more convincing people with that hacker spirit to apply their skills and drive to computer engineering, rather than quant finance or law or other career paths taken up by people with that drive.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
...if they paid more tax, then maybe we could afford to pay teachers who actually know about computer programming.
In the UK, teachers salaries are so bad, that nobody with a programming background will ever take a teaching job.
Microsoft will continue to complain about lack of programmer supply until programmers make less than walmart cashiers.
The same kind of protagonists are performing the same schtick in the US and in Europe.
STEM is called MINT, skill gap is Fachkräftemangel, and H1B is called "blue card" (yes. someone mixed up work permit and permanent residency when looking for a catchy name)
Arguments are the same, debate is the same.
And it becomes slightly absurd when immigration officers at a US border somehow expect every other country but the US to be a 3rd world hole people would be happy to trade in for a McJob in the US of A. They can't even imagine that someone likes their job and their home country and actually WANTS to go home after their visit.
bickerdyke
Judging by lots of their products and close encounters with their "consultants", I think it is fair to call Micro$oft pretty damn clueless (shoeless)!
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People who didn't learn to code by the time they were 7 have never been able to program as adults. It sure is lucky a supply of people taught to code by ancient alien astronauts was supplied to us so we could bootstrap the procedure, because no one in the history of our species has learned new skills past age 7.
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English.
Unlike you, it would seem.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Kids really don't need to learn to "code". Only trained monkeys working for few bucks/hour "code". Of course, Facebooks and Microsofts need such people too, but that really isn't what we should be teaching to kids.
Have them learn mathematics, abstract and analytical thinking, let them do actual science, experiments, let them tinker (and fail!), expose them to the computers and computer science too. That is much more important.
Whether the little Johnny or Susan can write a program for adding up a few numbers or make a web page when they can barely read and write yet doesn't matter - perhaps they will become an excellent physicists or chemists instead. Or perhaps get a Nobel for curing cancer, who knows. We will need all kinds of engineers and scientists, not only cubicle monkeys slaving for Microsofts of the future. Schools shouldn't serve only one industry - if the kids are prepared and interested, they will go in the computer science themselves, without having to "spoon-feed" them with it.
I simply wonder why these behemoths of companies sitting on so much cash don't run their own re-qualification/education programs? That would be a win-win situation for everyone. And it not some silly commie invention - Tomas Bata (the shoe tycoon from before the WWII) was doing exactly that - taking kids from the street and offering them education - and gaining qualified and loyal workers in the process. Of course, it is cheaper to whine about the lack of visas for foreign labour and poor school systems and demand that someone else solves your problems ...
Hence it can be learned pretty much at the convenience of the individual in question in a few months, even starting from scratch.
There is no reason to teach "coding" to 7 year-olds. They are too young to fill any vacancies that may exist and by the time they have got to an employable age, obtained a degree (as few employers will touch an IT person without one) the "coding" skills they learned 15 years ago will be almost completely obsolete. One might argue that they will have learned to employ logic, but again: unless that skill is exercised regularly, it too will be lost.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
If a student has the drive to tinker and learn, most public schools here offer enough of a basic education to get them going in the right direction.
Those are the people that FaceGoog don't want to pay unless they failed at a startup a few times and got absorbed via acqui-hire.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
I resent that comment.
I started programming at 8 in QBASIC, I earn 6.25$ an hour and still consider myself competent. Doing Python, Actionscript, C++, C#, PHP, lua, java, little bit of assembly to crack the software that the company won't buy but I still need, arduinos, format conversion utilities, all sorts of stuff. I'm not great, hell, maybe even not good, writing an algorithm for arranging variably-sized images into a tiling mosaic took me the better part of a week. But competent? Sure.
Not sure if I want to post my employer's website or not.
Look, I try to explain my though on this and everytime I do, my karma gets blasted. Please try to understand I'm not against anyone here or the principals that you stand for - I'm only stating my opinion. I don't teach my kids to code because I want them to focus on a field that has a future that could lead them to have a lucrative career, be successful, financially secure and someday marry a lovely wife and give me some great grandchildren. Coding is not that path. There are several factors that contribute. 1) We have people that come from other countries that bring with them a lower standard of living. Those people can be qualified for these types of jobs, and will bring the average salary down with them - simply because they'll accept less. 2) Our society is not impressed with those with brains. We are more geared toward giving money to the football team mentality, which basically entails - follow the team, take orders and don't think. These are the people that tend to become successful, as I have witnessed anyway. We also tend to make a joke of the bright. We make movies like "the intern" that shows smart people as not fun, not cool, and not someone you want to be. You want to be more like the idiots - Vaughn and Wilson. Smart people aren't respected, and as a result, society doesn't pay them. We'd rather pay the firefighters, our heroes. 3) Coders aren't the best business people. Although I understand the whole free software movement, and like aspects of it, it's bringing us all down as people who have a chance to be paid well (as I believe we should). My salary is not sufficient for joining the country club, or eating at the high end steak joints. My sales buddies have left me in the dust. When something is made to be free, for indirect reasons that I won't get into - it's quality goes down, and it's value goes down. Companies that make software have to come up with creative ways to even make money doing this anymore. I wish we'd take a cue from the artists and musicians, who constantly speak of the way that their product now being free has destroyed their industry, and led to nothing but crap being produced these days. So... For my kids? They're extremely bright - and could actually learn calculus and perhaps write brilliant code. But I'm going to steer them towards some public sector job - like spraying water on a fire - because that's how they'll become successful. They'll get the good healthcare benefits (that we pay for handsomely) that last for life, they'll work 3 days on and 4 days off, which will give them an opportunity to create some meathead company like landscaping or HVAC - then they won't have to pay taxes anymore either. It's just my opinion - but I really think we've shot ourselves in the foot.
No MBA ever complained about a lack of MBAs in the market. I really wonder why.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't think everyone should have to learn to code. I don't think everyone should learn chemistry either, but schools still do a reasonable job of teaching basic chemistry for kids who choose to pursue it.
The real issue is where I live when it comes to kids taking the option to learn to code is the awful "ICT" curriculum. The problems, in a nutshell are:
1. No environment for the kids to actually learn.
2. The curriculum is mainly nothing to do with ICT, it's really "office skills", in other words how to use wordprocessors, spreadsheets, make a simple website, that kind of thing. Nothing about how computers actually work and how to bend them to your will.
Point (1) is probably the most serious. The school I went to didn't teach any kind of computing class (out of sheer snobbery - it was available as GCSE and A level subjects when I was at school), however, what they had was a room full of computers where those of us who had an interest were provided with all the materials we needed and told basically "do what you want, except play video games - unless you coded the game yourself". We did code games as a matter of fact, which meant some kids who were too lazy to learn trigonometry in maths classes still ended up getting a good grasp of trig and some linear algebra as a side effect.
However, now the computers in schools are all locked down tighter than a duck's ass. You can't explore, you can't exercise your curiosity, you can't do anything. The usual excuse is "We can't allow it because the students might cause a problem on the network". This is easy to solve - have a separate development network just like I have at work - I don't hack code on production systems, and neither should kids at school. So you offer this as a solution and the next excuse is "We don't have the space for a room with a development network". So you point out that KVM switches are a thing and the dev network can be in the same computer room. "Oh, we can't afford the computers". The government here turns over their desktop every 2 or 3 years, and the schools can get them at a deeply, deeply discounted price. Or even use the Raspberry Pi. So they move onto the next excuse. "We'd need a sysadmin". Nope. Set up a system where the computer lab machines get re-imaged either by rebooting and pressing F12, or daily or whatever. Have one centrally made image for all the schools. It takes one guy to provide a bulletproof "trash and bash" system that can easily be reimaged. In the case of a Raspberry Pi, well, the student just has their own SD card and are responsible for it, if they screw it up they have to fix it themselves.
The other problem is that despite the monumental barriers put in their way, if a student tries to figure out how computers work on a school computer, they get suspended or expelled. It's like the school saying "We'll teach the kids how to add and subtract, but if we find them trying to learn algebra on school grounds, they will be expelled". Imagine the uproar if schools did this, but this is exactly what they are doing to kids who are curious about how computers work.
What I find utterly grotesque is that I had a much, much larger opportunity at school to learn how computers actually worked back in 1988 than kids do now in 2014. No wonder none of our kids learn to code. I suppose on the bright side it'll keep me in a job.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Erh... yes, that's what they want. Cheap codemonkeys that will push out cheap code. Security? Stability? Whazzat?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But isn't this a bit like someone in the 1960's or 70's saying "our children need to learn electrical engineering"?! After all digital watches, transistor radios, and these newfangled micro-computers will be the basis of our new economy, right! We must teach children to program logic gates now! And that was during the height of the Cold War, when we actually funded STEM programs.
Yet in reality the kids that truly did have a "future", meaning made lots of money, were the ones who studied finance, law or medicine. Wouldn't a hedge fund manager just hire a software developer when he needs coding done?
Unless Zuck and Gates have an ulterior motive, but that couldn't possibly be the case.
This Sig does not Exist.
Code what? Php? C#?
I dare say that we don't lack programmers. But considering the wages of C-Level execs, there must be an incredible shortage of them.
In a nutshell, we need A DAMN LOT more C-Level managers. Push kids into MBA courses. A few decades of graduates might finally get that salary level back to something more in touch with their actual worth.
Huh? What do you mean, that's not what you meant? Care to elaborate?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Let's start by saying you've got a good point when it comes to the mercenary nature of the corporations involved.
Acknowledging that, a lot of people on here seem to be criticizing coding as an activity for kids *because of their own notion of what that means - particularly reams of text, etc*.
Coding is simply a way of instructing a machine to do something (at its root). If you have the right graphical ways of doing this and the things the machine can do (for instance a Lego mindstorm robot or an RC car with computer control), then this doesn't have to be a boring exercise for kids. There are several enrichment programs for kids from 8-12 around here using lego mindstorm products.
What does coding involve? Sequencing actions/instructions (a skill kids need to learn and practice), understanding on some level trade offs between two options (another important skill for kids to develop), and an ability to create a solution to a problem using tools (a skill kids usually intuitively manifest). These ARE key developmental skills. They aren't the only skills of import (teaching the kids about life, about society, about how the world works socially, and about mathematics and critical thinking are all valid and useful, as are languages and philosophy). But the skills that coding can develop can be helpful too and can be fun if done right.
I don't want to plop my 7 year old in front of a mixed batch of C and assembler or even Ruby Off The Rails, but I wouldn't mind sitting down with her and having her learn to control a robot via an app on an iPad where she could program the robot to accomplish a variety of things and to solve puzzles or to have her use an app to direct a character to solve puzzles (an educational game could be made from a programming task). It has to be fun but it can also help her develop key skills.
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This new commenting thing is a mess. My preview looks fine with paragraph spacing even after I preview it, but when I post it, it jams everything together.
What sort of a preview is it that doesn't display what will show up when the submission is done? That's ridiculous.
Is there a setting I need to fix? Or is this just slashdot's Beta sucking?
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
..because kids should be kids, and even if they are coders, by the time they start working the language they learned will be branded `the worst first language'
Silicon Valley companies disproportionately hire Asians, in particular Asian immigrants, while hiring disproportionately fewer whites, blacks, and Hispanics.
So, they are consistent: they believe that US and European countries aren't producing enough good coders and hire accordingly.
So, you are using the fact that C-level executive salaries don't work the way you expect supply and demand to work in the labor market as evidence that we don't lack programmers?
Your expectations are wrong. Salaries aren't set just by supply and demand, for numerous reasons.
And, FWIW, compensation at Microsoft and Facebook is far above the median for US workers anyway.
Oh? So please enlighten us, which un-capitalistic mechanism sets the price of labour?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What about Raspberry Pi. It has done an awful lot to expand educational opportunities in Europe and the rest of the World. Many teachers and children have been inspired to learn to "code" because of the RPi. It does take time for all of those 7 year olds to develop and enter the workforce though, how about 15 years or so including engineering school.
And, FWIW, compensation at Microsoft and Facebook is far above the median for US workers anyway.
Yes, and they hate that. Hence the continued drive to depress software engineer wages.
Maybe I'm showing my age, but why do I keep hearing a lot of talk about "coding" and hardly anything about computer science? Does the world really need more people that can program a computer, but who are clueless about topics like data structures, algorithmic complexity, grammars, etc?
structural engineering, gastrointestinal surgery, quantum mechanics, income tax law, synthesizing pharmaceuticals, etc...
Some are calling the phenomenon "being kids".
So much for reintroducing child labour.
C-Level execs pay isn't about supply of MBAs. It's about supply of MBAs that are deemed worthy of entry into the elitist clubhouse. There just aren't that many people with an IQ over 160 who don't have any opinions that would be too dangerous for someone in power.
Markets set the price of labor. You simply don't understand how markets work. Decreasing the supply of something doesn't necessarily increase its price, it may simply cause people to substitute.
The only friend I know who did a CS degree did not take A-Level (pre-university) IT and my friends that were most talented at IT all did physics degrees. We do loose out massively as a result - I've done a chemistry degree and having been taught programming skill in school would have made many aspects of that course vastly easier and more rewarding, indeed they have to teach programming (C++ in the modules I took) in some of the computational chemistry modules before they can get onto the chemistry.
Programming and other CS skill aren't just useful for those who want to take a CS degree or work in IT they're widely helpful in every day life and close to becoming essential in many fields (science, maths, stats); just about anyone who does an office job would benefit from having these skills. The UK is loosing out, and will continue to loose out, because for a whole generation IT was viewed as an unimportant part of the curriculum and, even now, is mostly taught and organised by people who don't know what they're talking about and think that teaching 16 year olds to use Dreamweaver is the same as teaching them programming.
It's a sad state of affairs for the country that produced the BBC Micro; even the Raspbery Pi, which was supposed to be a modern equivalent of the BBC Micro, is used more by hobbyists than for education. (Yes, I'm bitter because I missed out on learning an important and useful skill during my schooling simply because the school were too lazy to teach it properly.)
I didn't even see a computer until I was 12, and then at like 13 we got to do a little Logo programming, like one day worth in class. At that point it was more about learning to operate a computer rather than actually code for it. Same thing in high school, we got a computer operations class to learn word processing, spreadsheets, and databases on an Apple IIgs. I did take the optional class after that one to do some BASIC programming, but that would've been when I was 16. When the jocks were getting their cars, I was getting a computer. An now I'm a professional programmer.
Then it's about time we substitute away the hydrocephalus on top of our corporations.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's a lot of verbiage for simply saying that you want a planned economy. No, it's not time for that because it doesn't work.
No, I want to move away from our planned economy. It doesn't matter how you choose the nomenclatura, whether they're the ones who sing the right hymns, the ones who follow the right doctrine or the ones who went to the right school, neither results in a rule of the best and brightest, either is simply and plainly nepotism.
I can't honestly think of any existing system ever that didn't end up with a small lining of aristocracy (however that was called, whether it's the aristocracy of the good ol' times of nobility, whether it's the aristocracy of the communist politburo or whether it's our aristocracy of money).
By the way: The system you might describe as "communist" (which I refuse to accept, it was much but certainly not communist) failed for the same reasons, oddly, that the system we live in today will fail (which I refuse to consider even remotely capitalist). I'm fairly sure true communism can work. I'd still prefer true capitalism. Not because it's better, but it's far easier to implement.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The rich do not form an aristocracy in the standard meaning of the word; in fact, capitalism was instrumental in ending the power of aristocracies in Europe.
The term "aristocracy of money" may also be used as a metaphor, to express the idea that money confers aristocracy-like benefits, but that analogy does not work, because the old saying “It is only but three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves.” holds true. Most wealthy in the US became that way without inheriting the wealth.
Absolutely. The commonality is the phenomena described by public choice theory. Nepotism, cronyism, abuse of governmental power exist are both a problem in our society and were a problem in all socialist and communist countries. But there is a big difference in terms of degree. In the US, that kind of corruption may account for 30% of the economy, in socialist and communist regimes, it easily accounted for 90%, and that makes all the difference: it's why we ended up wealthy and they did not. Furthermore, such corruption is part of life: you can't eliminate it entirely, and if you tried, the cure would be worse than the disease.
That's always ever been the utilitarian argument for capitalism. Ideal capitalism works worse than ideal communism, but real capitalism works better.
But there is a second question, namely not what "works", but what kind of society we want to live in. Even perfect communism would result in a large loss of individual liberties; it's intrinsic and unavoidable.