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Washington May Count CS As Foreign Language For College Admission

Posted by timothy on from the alle-menschen-sind-auslaender dept.

theodp writes On Wednesday, Washington State held a public hearing on House Bill 1445, which proposes a study "to allow two years of computer sciences to count as two years of world languages for the purposes of admission into a four-year institution of higher education." Among the questions posed by the House Higher Education Committee to a UW rep at the hearing was the following: "What's the case for...not just world language is good, world language is well-rounded, but world language is so super-duper-duper good that you should spend two years of your life doing them and specifically better than something else like coding?" The promise of programming jobs, promoted by Microsoft execs and other MS folks like ex-Program Manager Audrey Sniezek (ironically laid off last summer), has prompted Kentucky to ponder a similar measure.

11 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. BASICally my reply is... by Guy+From+V · · Score: 4, Funny

    10 PRINT "WTF"
    20 GOTO 10

    1. Re:BASICally my reply is... by nathan+s · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This. I love coding and languages both, but they aren't even remotely the same. I think learning actual languages does two things that coding doesn't: it gets you to speak to real people (hopefully, if you're doing it right) and it helps you learn a little bit about another culture. Practicing your ability to deal with differences and similarities and maybe even to empathize with other people is a really important life skill that you aren't going to get at all from coding.

      Plus, even from a business perspective, it seems to me that in general people who can talk to people end up making more money than people who only know how to talk to machines.

      --
      picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
    2. Re:BASICally my reply is... by TWX · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Hell, my wife told me a story, she was a new undergrad at MIT and the new residents in the dorm were hanging out in the lounge getting to know one another. They got on the topic of foreign languages since there were a lot of kids from other countries or who had traveled fairly extensively, and when one boy was asked how many languages he knew, he replied, "computer, or other?" which drew lambasting from his fellow nerds at arguably one of the nerdiest universities in the world.

      Computer languages are not interpersonal communication languages, and they should not be treated as such. That doesn't mean that I necessarily agree with the foreign language requirements for college admittance (ie, if EVERYONE is supposed to go to college at a given school whether they actually should or not, then foreign language is taught to the lowest-common-denominator and no one learns it well) but treating things that aren't spoken or written human languages as such is stupid.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    3. Re:BASICally my reply is... by Tumalu · · Score: 3, Interesting

      But realistically, taking two years of a foreign language in high school isn't going to be enough for most people to strike up with conversations people in that language. That's not to say you can't learn a language to fluency in two years - just that you'll need to put in more that a couple of hours per week.

      I agree that coding is very different from learning a foreign language, but I do think that the question in the summary makes a valid point. Why is learning a foreign language so important that we should dedicate 4 semesters to it (especially when most people don't learn it to the point where it could become directly useful in their daily lives)? IMO, coding brings up the same question - how useful will 2 years of programming classes be for the average non-programmer?

      While I wouldn't equate learning a programming language with learning a foreign language, it doesn't seem unreasonable to allow students to replace once class of questionable usefulness with another class of questionable usefulness.

    4. Re:BASICally my reply is... by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Why is learning a foreign language so important that we should dedicate 4 semesters to it (especially when most people don't learn it to the point where it could become directly useful in their daily lives)?

      At the very least, it lets you appreciate the struggle that others face when they speak your language as a second language.

      One of the major goals of education is the development of an appreciation of the condition of others on many levels -- not just social, but cultural, geographical, historical, technological... and linguistic. You won't necessarily become an expert on the differences we all have, but you do learn that we are different, and to appreciate it.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  2. Not the same thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    CS is about rationally mathematically describing a step by step algorithm , foreign language is about getting to communicate with human , foreign cultures, and getting a bit outside your own cocoon. They are not for the same purpose and practically have nothing to do to each others. Making such equivalence make no sense to me.

  3. Assembly the same worldwide by shuz · · Score: 3, Funny

    Assembler is coded the same in all 196 countries. So the next time you are on holiday just shift some registers to communicate with whomever, wherever you are!

    --
    There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
  4. Re:A better idea by kwiecmmm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Or two years of an actual foreign language. There have been studies that show that learning a foreign language helps programmers program better and read code better.

  5. Music for that matter by avandesande · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If they are going to do this for CS they may as well do it for music. Musical notation and I suppose math are the only two notation systems that are consistent in any culture. (I don't particularly agree with the premise of the OP)

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
  6. the case by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "What's the case for...not just world language is good, world language is well-rounded, but world language is so super-duper-duper good that you should spend two years of your life doing them and specifically better than something else like coding?"

    Steve Jobs has this one:

    “I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to [learn calligraphy]. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great....None of this had any hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would never have multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.

    If all you do is write code and never learn to communicate, you're going to end up writing code like Microsoft does (seriously, 16,000 lines in a single file? And there are plenty of other lengthy files too, that's not really an anomaly).

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  7. Re: And suddenly... by goodmanj · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're arguing from what you expect, rather than from data.

    The number of Americans able to hold a conversation in a foreign language is about 25%. Which is nowhere near "Most Americans".
    http://www.gallup.com/poll/182...

    This is especially bad since about 17% of Americans are Hispanic. Not all Hispanics are bilingual, of course.

    In the UK the bilingual rate is about 38%; in Ireland it's 34%, both higher than the US, despite your claims. Across the EU, it's 56%.
    http://www.newscientist.com/ar...

    It's understandable that English-speaking countries have lower rates, but even within English-speaking nations, the US is pretty near the bottom.
    (Australia is right at the bottom.)
    http://yourlanguage.org/resear...