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Chicago Mayor Calls For National Computer Coding Requirement In Schools (thehill.com)
theodp writes: On Thursday, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called on the federal government to make computer coding classes a requirement of high-school graduation (video). Back in December 2013, Emanuel — who previously served as President Obama's chief of staff — joined then-Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett to announce a comprehensive K-12 computer science program for CPS students, including a partnership with then-nascent Code.org. "[Y]ou need this skill Make it a high-school graduation requirement," Emanuel said. "They need to know this stuff. In the way that I can get by kind of being OK by it, they can't.
Essentially, this would trash the computer science/coding curriculum at most schools. Whereas now the classes consist of motivated students who want to learn, this would cram in all the dullards who don't want to be in the class. Thus it would suck the resources away from the students who want to learn.
Thank goodness he's just a mayor and can't rham his idea through.
What's really needed are courses in things like "How not to fall into the debt trap" and "Why being educated is actually worth some effort so you don't end up on welfare", etc.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
It's one things to say that all schools would have to require it as an elective (which means they have to deal w/ trying to find qualified teachers, etc).
But requiring all students to learn it? Hell no. Jeff is right, it's just another skill. Sure, it's great that I rebuilt a lawn mower engine back in high school ... but we didn't even spend a full semester on that.
Every time some new 'requirement' comes along, something else is going to need to get bumped -- how many schools still have a shop class, or home ec? I'd much rather see home economics be a requirement again, and bring in some lessons on compound interest, savings, and why gambling and money lenders suck, rather than just cooking & sewing. (and if it were all about saving money, then shop class should count as 'home ec', too).
If you want more people to take programming classes ... reclassify it as a foreign language. Then kids could decide to take it instead of French or Spanish, without it meaning that they need yet another class to graduate.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Let's be perfectly clear here: If you get a highschool diploma, and stop your education ... you will not be programming computers.
If you think you're going to have a bunch of kids coming out of highschool who are the programming workforce of the future ... you have decided to set your kids future up so that they will be the low-paid programmers who only have a highschool diploma.
Somehow we've let a bunch of rich people who work in technology to convince the world that everybody needs to know how to program a computer. And this is largely so they can have a large workforce of cheap fucking labor.
The people telling us this don't give a shit about your kids. They give a shit about driving down wages for their own profits.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Everyone does not need to learn to code. Period.
A symbolic logic class would be a good idea for all programmers. It helps you learn how do do your Boolean algebra when you're developing code but it also teaches you the difference between "everyone does not need to..." and "not everyone needs to..." ;)
A symbolic logic class would be a good idea for all programmers.
A formal logic class (whether heavy on symbols or not) would be a good idea for everyone.
We can all debate how some people just have an "aptitude" for coding and people who don't, and people who just happen to have a certain kind of "intellect" and others who don't. Getting to a high skill level in programming is obviously just not a reasonable goal for most people, nor should it be.
But we could all benefit from being able to think through a problem using logic. Various tests that have been done with the general population tend to show that most people are abysmal at evaluating formal logical arguments.
We used to teach that sort of reasoning in various ways. Geometry classes used to do more formal proofs. Classical languages (especially Latin) were taught in an ahistorical way that turns them into a weird sort of logic exercise in assembling and deducing the meaning of a long convoluted sentence. (I don't think that's a good method for learning actual Latin, but it worked as a logic exercise.)
We used to test it too -- IQ tests had a big portion of it, and the GRE had a whole "analytical" section devoted to logic problems. The SAT used to have "quantitative comparisons" in the math section that required the evaluation and comparison of things in an abstract way, rather than following a simple formula/algorithm to get a precise answer. The verbal section used to have analogies, and one component to understanding how they work is thinking in terms of logic: "If A, then B..." -- how does that relate to a similar relationship "if C, then...."
Etc.
We've gradually moved training and tests in logic out of our school curricula and replaced them with rote learning and step-by-step algorithms. There's a lot of talk in educational reform about "thinking on a higher level," but the reality is that one fundamental skill toward "thinking on a higher level" is being trained in HOW TO THINK.
That's logic. Whether we're going to use a formal logic class or geometry proofs or well-designed coding exercises doesn't really matter. The fact is that most people can get better at thinking logically... if they had any training in it. But we assume that it's a skill that people should just "pick up" -- except most people simply don't. (And this has serious repercussions in terms of people's abilities to evaluate public policy arguments, to be taken in by politicians' or religious wackos' nonsense... etc., etc.)
I personally don't think a required coding course is the answer. But this is part of a bigger problem, and it's not getting better.