Australia's Prime Minister Doesn't Get Why Kids Should Learn To Code

New submitter Gob Gob writes: The Prime Minister of Australia has come out and ridiculed an opposition policy aimed at teaching kids to code. In response to the leader of the Labor Party's question about whether he would commit to supporting Labor's push to have coding taught in every primary school in Australia, the Prime Minister said: "He said that he wants primary school kids to be taught coding so they can get the jobs of the future. Does he want to send them all out to work at the age of 11? Is that what he wants to do? Seriously?"

Comments

Tony Abbott ...

[thephydes]

doesn't get a few things, like digging 60M tonnes of coal from central Queensland might be a) bad for the Great Barrier Reef (because of the port infrastructure needed) and b) bad for CO2 levels in the atmosphere, and C) bad for Australia because we will pay for infrastructure for these projects to go ahead. He is typical of conservative politics in Australia - I hope his great grand-children forgive him.

Doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because as soon as you're taught something you have to go out and get a job based on it. In another time this would have been like querying whether kids should be taught to read and write in primary school...

Re:Doesn't get it

[GrumpySteen]

The point of teaching computer programming is not to make every child a computer programmer any more than the point of a biology class is to make every child into a biologist.

Re:Doesn't get it

[FireFury03]

Yeah, because as soon as you're taught something you have to go out and get a job based on it. In another time this would have been like querying whether kids should be taught to read and write in primary school...

Unlike reading and writing there is absolutely no evidence supporting to faux claim that children must learn to develop computer programmes. Mark Zuckerburg et. al. are the social parasites.

You could say the same about a lot of subjects though - do children _have_ to understand maths, history, geography, art, music, etc? However, having a broad education is a Good Thing. Furthermore, being able to write simple code can be a massive help in many non-coding jobs.

For example, my wife is a hospital doctor - probably the last thing you'd expect that job to need is coding skills. However, she needs to do audits over records occasionally, and I end up writing simple Python scripts for her to process the data - she has no coding skills, so without me to do that she would be spending hours doing stuff manually that I can write code in minutes to do. She tells me that her IT classes at secondary school were almost entirely taken up by teaching about the health and safety concerns related to using computers, rather than actually learning how to use them. I'm 5 years older (which puts me in the BBC/Acorn era) and my GCSE level IT classes taught me some basics about word processors, databases, etc, but no coding - I learnt to code in my own time. Being _taught_ to code didn't happen until A levels in my case, by which time anyone who isn't planning to have a career in computing or electronics has opted out in favor of other subjects.

Re:Doesn't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the point of biology class was to turn every child into a bit of a biologist, just as a programming class will turn them into a bit of a programmer ... just as I am a bit of a cook, even though I'm a pretty bad one and I don't work in a restaurant. This idea that there are "biologists" who dedicate their lives to it and everyone else is a "non-biologist" just promulgates both elitism on the one hand and ignorance on the other. Same goes for programming. You may never write an application in your life, but being a bit of a programmer is going to help you the first time you need to, say, formulate a complex Google query.

Re:Doesn't get it

[HiThereImBob]

We should certainly be providing a well rounded education, but let's not ignore where this whole push to code comes from. It's from the people who pay the coders, and they hate paying high wages. The same people who cry about a lack of engineers in general, who push for more H1B's, who want to drive down wages in the industry.

This doesn't have anything to do with benefiting the children, it's so Zuckerberg can be worth $28 Billion when he dies instead of $22 Billion - at the expense of those children.

Re:Doesn't get it

[narcc]

Why does this come up in every discussion?

Programming is not special. It does not require a "special mind" or other magical in-born trait. Whatever cognitive skills you believe are requisite are shared by many other subjects. Nor is programming a particularly difficult skill to acquire -- children can, and often do, teach themselves. Odds are good that you taught yourself sometime around the age of 10, +/- a year or two.

"Oh, but only a few can be truly great", someone is bound to say in one form or another. Then we'd better not waste resources teaching children to write, as only a few will have the skill of Hemingway. Nor should we teach them arithmetic, as so few are capable of becoming great mathematicians.

The ability to write computer programs should not be such a large part of your identity. It's like seeing smug posts from folks who can drive a vehicle with a manual transmission -- a skill that took me an hour to learn, and a week to master. That does not make me special. Being able to write computer programs doesn't make me special. They're both simple skills anyone can learn.

NBN

[The Evil Atheist]

He's the PM who wanted to scrap the National Broadband Network and thought more roads was what Australia needed. He obviously doesn't get information technology at all.

I kind of agree

[Anonymous Coward]

I get that everyone wants to teach kids to do what they like because they think they are the best version of human and obviously it is best for humanity if your life template is copied as much as possible, but I don't get why it is so obvious to everyone that getting everyone to code is so beneficial.

There is a LOT to life, and not everyone needs to be doing the same things, or is even capable or willing to do those things. Everyone has different strengths and limitations. Even if you go on about how learning to code teaches a lot of associated skills, those same skills can be learned many other ways.

I dunno, it just feels like all this "TEACH ALL KIDZ TO CODE, LOL" going around is a bunch of mutual masturbation and self-fellatio.

Re:I kind of agree

[FireFury03]

I get that everyone wants to teach kids to do what they like because they think they are the best version of human and obviously it is best for humanity if your life template is copied as much as possible, but I don't get why it is so obvious to everyone that getting everyone to code is so beneficial.

There is a LOT to life, and not everyone needs to be doing the same things, or is even capable or willing to do those things. Everyone has different strengths and limitations. Even if you go on about how learning to code teaches a lot of associated skills, those same skills can be learned many other ways.

I dunno, it just feels like all this "TEACH ALL KIDZ TO CODE, LOL" going around is a bunch of mutual masturbation and self-fellatio.

Whilst most jobs don't _require_ coding skills, a lot of them would be done more efficiently if people had those skills. I would argue that knowing some basics about coding is probably more useful to the "average person" than a large chunk of the history, biology, maths, art, geography, etc. classes that we send kids to today.

Of course, what's "most useful" shouldn't be the only criteria used in education - giving someone a well rounded education is also an excellent idea, but I think it's hard to argue that teaching people some basic coding skills wouldn't also fit into that.

I'm sure /. will ridicule it, but...

[Dahamma]

I mostly agree with him.

I (and I'm sure MANY of us!) didn't learn any programming skills formally until college (and some not even there). I learned basic skills on my own because I thought it was fun, learned more formally in college, and really only made the decision to go into software engineering soon before graduation.

I just think kids are better off learning more general areas - math, physics, chemistry, writing/literature, social sciences, economics, and BASIC (pun intended) computer science/programming. Leave the specialization to a time where they know what that even means.

Re:I'm sure /. will ridicule it, but...

[Dutch Gun]

Computers are pretty integral to modern learning. At the very least, kids nowadays need to be able to use a computer just like they need to know how to wield a pencil. As far as basics... computer programming is an excellent real-world opportunity to put basic skills to practical use, especially logic and math.

BTW, you call chemistry "basic"? Why is chemistry of any practical use to anyone but anyone but a chemist? I can't recall a single instance in my life when I had to apply any sort of chemistry-based knowledge. Let's apply that same logic to computer programming. How often are these kids going to be interacting with computers in their lifetimes? Might it not be handy to understand how those computers work, and perhaps even know how to write scripts to automate tasks, for instance? Which of the two knowledge or skill sets (programming or chemistry) is more likely to have a direct impact on these kids lives?

TL;DR version: nowadays, computers ARE fundamental.

Coding: Language Skills

[Dutch Gun]

Learning to code is like learning a second language. It teaches you to think in the mindspace of the computer, so to speak... that is, the kids are learning about logic, arithmetic, flow control, and other such concepts. Once you get the basics down, learning other languages becomes much easier. Even if those kids don't become programmers, the familiarity they get with computers and the higher lessons learned should still be worthwhile.

Those of us who program for a living nowadays probably started programming on our own when we were younger. My first lessons were self-taught, thanks to an Apple II I had access to, as well as a book that taught AppleBASIC (and one designed for kids, of all things - I wish I could find that book somewhere). Later in college, I decided I wanted to become a programmer, and picked up Pascal, C, and C++ quite easily, thanks to my earlier lessons in BASIC.

As long as the curriculum is solid, this seems like a positive thing. I wonder if it's difficult to find qualified instructors, though?

Re:Coding: Language Skills

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you can kind of say that coding is like a second language, but whenever someone says that I can't help but think they've either never actually learned a second language or they've never learned to code.

Re:No kid should be forced to code ...

[__aabppq7737]

... but then, kids who are interested in making their own computer programs should be allowed to do so

I think this is what the prime minister is trying to argue: most 11-year-olds just lack the cognitive functions to engineer software. It doesn't mean they can't write code, just not engineering software, because software engineering requires an architect, designer, lead programmer, and night-shift-programmer.

There is truth in his question.

[Culture20]

Teaching coding to elementary/primary school children may not be helpful. A good portion of them may not yet grasp the perquisites necessary to understand logic for conditionals. If there are more crucial learning deficits like reading or arithmetic, then it's better to focus on them first.

Re:No kid should be forced to code ...

[halltk1983]

I can't imagine any scenario other than software development that would benefit a person to think logically, break big problems into little ones, recurse through large numbers of things in a standard format, or think of a computer as something other than a magic mystery box. It's a good thing we got rid of shop class too, since no one but construction workers need to know how to use a hammer.