You know, I'm less offended by the fact that these classes only usually teach the basics and that the teachers know very little, and more offended by the fact that programming was just called an important skill. I know how to program somewhat myself, and I enjoy doing it, but I am getting extremely tired of people pushing for mandatory classes in school that they deem 'important'. It's only important if you're actually going to use it!
"But, some people don't know what their careers will be in the future!"
Well, then, they can take the same classes they're forced to take now, or be fired from whatever job they attempt to acquire due to the fact that they didn't learn what they needed to. Going by the logic people are currently using, in the future, kids will be at school the entire day learning a wide array of useless information that they will forget in the future simply because of the fact that they may use it in the future. The only classes that should be mandatory are useful classes that almost everyone will need, such as basic math, the native language(s) of your country, history, etc. This is absolutely insane. Forcing kids to take useless classes only encourages failure, due to the fact that they likely won't be interested in them, and if they fail them, it'll affect their overall grade, and they might even fail the entire year. The current educational system is simply broken, and adding 50,000 more mandatory classes isn't going to fix it.
That said, I once had a Visual Basic (ugh) class where the teacher thought I was a 'master programmer' or some such because I knew what a function was and was able to make labels on the screen move. In fact, the entire class was impressed at that display. I knew more than he did in the first couple of weeks of taking the classes than he did, even though he had been teaching it for three years. Sadly, I'm not joking.
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You know, I'm less offended by the fact that these classes only usually teach the basics and that the teachers know very little, and more offended by the fact that programming was just called an important skill. I know how to program somewhat myself, and I enjoy doing it, but I am getting extremely tired of people pushing for mandatory classes in school that they deem 'important'. It's only important if you're actually going to use it! "But, some people don't know what their careers will be in the future!" Well, then, they can take the same classes they're forced to take now, or be fired from whatever job they attempt to acquire due to the fact that they didn't learn what they needed to. Going by the logic people are currently using, in the future, kids will be at school the entire day learning a wide array of useless information that they will forget in the future simply because of the fact that they may use it in the future. The only classes that should be mandatory are useful classes that almost everyone will need, such as basic math, the native language(s) of your country, history, etc. This is absolutely insane. Forcing kids to take useless classes only encourages failure, due to the fact that they likely won't be interested in them, and if they fail them, it'll affect their overall grade, and they might even fail the entire year. The current educational system is simply broken, and adding 50,000 more mandatory classes isn't going to fix it. That said, I once had a Visual Basic (ugh) class where the teacher thought I was a 'master programmer' or some such because I knew what a function was and was able to make labels on the screen move. In fact, the entire class was impressed at that display. I knew more than he did in the first couple of weeks of taking the classes than he did, even though he had been teaching it for three years. Sadly, I'm not joking.