The implication of code.org is that there is some kind of barrier to computer programming for students. This is simply not the case. You wanna "code", great, start coding. All of the tools I use as a professional are freely available to anyone who wants to download them. There are countless thousands of free tutorials on-line for virtually every language. There is absolutely no barrier whatsoever to anyone learning to code.
But... There's a huge difference between "coding" and being a professional computer programmer. Anyone can do the former, almost no one can do the latter. The simple fact of the matter is, we get paid so much because this stuff is hard and requires talent. Not all humans can sing professionally and not all humans can program professionally. This has nothing whatsoever to do forcing children to learn musical scales or how make boxes and circles bounce around on a web page.
How about if we just let the people with a passion for programming do that and let everyone else be.
I would agree with you if the purpose of educating the public was simply to make them personally happier or more productive. In democratic societies, this is not the case. The purpose of education is to produce citizens capable of participating in there own government.
Thomas Jefferson was a major proponent of dire necessity of public education for the continuance of democracy. He asserted four basic principals -
"that democracy cannot long exist without enlightenment.
that it cannot function without wise and honest officials.
that talent and virtue, needed in a free society, should be educated regardless of wealth, birth or other accidental condition.
that the children of the poor must be thus educated at common expense."
Are we educating citizens in America today? Nope, public education is grinding out worker drones that are specifically taught not to think. Jefferson would never have believed that the political sanction of free speech and inquiry that is occurring on campuses today would even be possible in the society he was envisioning. Let alone the outright programming of the populace to conform to the authority of the government, their employers, and God, in that order.
Instead of citizens capable of rational participation in their own government, we're producing franchisees of that Government, who've been formally taught, for seventeen years in most cases, that:
every idea is just as important as every other idea (there's no way to prove anything definitively, so why not ID, etc. Gravity is just a theory, after all),
that there are lots of ways to be intelligent (music intelligence, gee-its-too-bad-your-poor intelligence, etc.),
that it's more important to feel good about your self than to actually achieve anything, and
that worst possible thing they could do is form a judgment.
Being politically correct is the very most important ideal, with being economically performant running a close second.
This process produces plenty of highly suggestible votes for the "democratic" process, since the sole and only criteria for participating in the democracy is the ability to fog a mirror. By not teaching anything about true politics it also produces a great deal of nihilistic apathy about the processes of government (which is much, much better from the incumbent office holder's point of view). Want proof? Ask the next person you see who their state representative is, who their city councilman is, and how the Electoral College works. Of course, if you need to look the answers up yourself... well, you get it.
So, what to do? Throw out public education? Beef-up public education? It really doesn't matter. Jefferson's ideal is unattainable because Americans are inherently uninterested in self-governance. The fact that nobody ever mentions the true purpose of public education in these discussions is prima facie evidence of our inability to successfully govern ourselves or even understand that we should. We'll continue on, living under the tyranny of the uneducated (though often credentialed with MBAs), uninterested, NASCAR-loving, not-particularly-moral majority, blissfully ceding our liberties to his majesty, Tyrannous Ignoramus, until our Chinese overlords put a stop to this "one-man-one-vote" nonsense. Probably sooner than later.
Wow!! In the time it took to type my comment, eleven other smartasses popped off with exactly the same thing. Don't ANY of us have anything better to do than state the obvious? (guess not)
Of course, it could be very earth-like if global warming causes a catastrophic "snowball earth" effect.
Re:Sounds like Encyclopedia Galactica (Asimov)
on
Forecasting Doomsday
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Remember that the point of Seldon's encyclopedia was not to prevent the collapse, which was inevitable, but to shorten the following dark-age.
Similarly, we are faced with the inevitable fact of rising global temperatures. We need to see more effort toward coping with the results of this fact and less useless rhetoric. By useless rhetoric, I mean any discussion that focuses on the fantasy of conservation and emission reduction or sweeping social changes that make societies "green". Only a fool thinks that anything like that will actually happen and we need not suffer fools gladly.
Equally idiotic is the assumption of a Mad Max like disintegration of society. We'll simply continue burn fossil fuels, and emit green house gases, until it's no longer the cheapest thing to do; then we'll gradually turn to the next cheapest form of energy. (There may be a war between the Occident and the Orient before burning the last of the oil, but then again, maybe not. A lot has changed since the last world war and, for the first time ever, the entire world is now joined in a single economy. It might make more sense to divvy-up rather than duke-it-out. )
Thinking that environmental change and the exhaustion of carbon-based fossil fuels is the end of civilization, however, is just stupidly short sighted. We can't imagine the specific changes that will occur to support the future, but we can be sure that they will occur. If I were alive in New York city in 1889, and the only thing I knew about 100 years from then is that there would be over six million people working in Manhattan (in 1989), it would be easy for me to think that the biggest problem facing them would be the removal of the literally mountains of horse shit generated by their comings and goings.
Remember that every human being comes with not just a mouth to eat but also a brain to think and hands to work. It's much wiser to adjust our sails than to try to change the wind.
This goomba couldn't keep a handfull of "researchers" alive in a greenhouse for a couple of months. How's he going to mars? He's not. Ever. Period.
Wannabuyabridge???
The economic studies are always interesting to me and occasionally something will happen in-game that provides a quick "level check". Recently SOE published a new boxed version of Star Wars Galaxies which includes both of the add-ons, Jump to Lightspeed and Rage of the Wookies. As an incentive, SOE included a BARC speeder special item, from the last movie. The new speeder is the only new content in the box, so it's the only incentive for existing players to buy it.
The BARC speeders immediately started selling for 3 million credits. Since the box is available for $30.00, the value of a SWG credit could easily be pegged at $0.00001. At least as of last week in the Intreped "galaxy".
Monks yep. You could renounce your worldly existence and join an order.
Smiths nope. Unless you were rich, in which case you had actual education and intellectual opportunities, you did whatever you were _born_ to. If your family were farmers, you were a farmer, period. We tend to project our current state of affairs into our speculations about the past. This is fun, but it has no effect on history.
Until the very recent past, there were geniuses laying bricks and plowing fields because the simple fact was, no matter how smart you were, there was no opportunity to use your brain to make a living. Maybe you could invent a better way to lay bricks? Maybe, but remember, there have been many other brick layers smarter than you and they didn't.
If we're really honest, most of us, lucky as we are to be coding, are not really advancing the state of anything now. We're laying bricks. Granted with Java/C++/Python instead of clay and mud, but still laying bricks.
The real problem is with the financial institution that will issue credit on the basis of minimal, easily obtainable and completely unverified personal identity.
If banks were held criminally responsible for issuing credit cards to identity forgers (they are, after all, aiding and abetting theft) this problem would clear up in a couple of hours. Just threaten to lock the CEO of CitiBank up for six months and you know they'll stop issuing VISA cards to anyone with a driver's license and a relatively human-looking head.
Sure, legitimate credit applicants would be inconvenienced by more thorough checks, but it would be a small price to pay compared to the months of sheer hell they go through now if their identity is successfully stolen.
An abacus?!? Bah... Luxury!! There was 175 of us what had to climb up hill, 10 miles, everyday, to count on our fingers and toes, many of which had froze off in the winter, and we was glad to do it!! Oh yeah, and all we had to eat was cold poison!
Here's my equally viable idea - the astronauts could jump straight up from the top of a mountain, fart and flap their arms!!
They could get to mars and back in two weeks, or a long weekend if they "bean up" just before lift off.
Another fine example of your tax dollars pissed away.
Slashdot Mirror
Well said!
The implication of code.org is that there is some kind of barrier to computer programming for students. This is simply not the case. You wanna "code", great, start coding. All of the tools I use as a professional are freely available to anyone who wants to download them. There are countless thousands of free tutorials on-line for virtually every language. There is absolutely no barrier whatsoever to anyone learning to code.
But... There's a huge difference between "coding" and being a professional computer programmer. Anyone can do the former, almost no one can do the latter. The simple fact of the matter is, we get paid so much because this stuff is hard and requires talent. Not all humans can sing professionally and not all humans can program professionally. This has nothing whatsoever to do forcing children to learn musical scales or how make boxes and circles bounce around on a web page.
How about if we just let the people with a passion for programming do that and let everyone else be.
Thomas Jefferson was a major proponent of dire necessity of public education for the continuance of democracy. He asserted four basic principals -
Are we educating citizens in America today? Nope, public education is grinding out worker drones that are specifically taught not to think. Jefferson would never have believed that the political sanction of free speech and inquiry that is occurring on campuses today would even be possible in the society he was envisioning. Let alone the outright programming of the populace to conform to the authority of the government, their employers, and God, in that order.
Instead of citizens capable of rational participation in their own government, we're producing franchisees of that Government, who've been formally taught, for seventeen years in most cases, that:
- every idea is just as important as every other idea (there's no way to prove anything definitively, so why not ID, etc. Gravity is just a theory, after all),
- that there are lots of ways to be intelligent (music intelligence, gee-its-too-bad-your-poor intelligence, etc.),
- that it's more important to feel good about your self than to actually achieve anything, and
- that worst possible thing they could do is form a judgment.
Being politically correct is the very most important ideal, with being economically performant running a close second.This process produces plenty of highly suggestible votes for the "democratic" process, since the sole and only criteria for participating in the democracy is the ability to fog a mirror. By not teaching anything about true politics it also produces a great deal of nihilistic apathy about the processes of government (which is much, much better from the incumbent office holder's point of view). Want proof? Ask the next person you see who their state representative is, who their city councilman is, and how the Electoral College works. Of course, if you need to look the answers up yourself... well, you get it.
So, what to do? Throw out public education? Beef-up public education? It really doesn't matter. Jefferson's ideal is unattainable because Americans are inherently uninterested in self-governance. The fact that nobody ever mentions the true purpose of public education in these discussions is prima facie evidence of our inability to successfully govern ourselves or even understand that we should. We'll continue on, living under the tyranny of the uneducated (though often credentialed with MBAs), uninterested, NASCAR-loving, not-particularly-moral majority, blissfully ceding our liberties to his majesty, Tyrannous Ignoramus, until our Chinese overlords put a stop to this "one-man-one-vote" nonsense. Probably sooner than later.
Wow!! In the time it took to type my comment, eleven other smartasses popped off with exactly the same thing. Don't ANY of us have anything better to do than state the obvious? (guess not)
Of course, it could be very earth-like if global warming causes a catastrophic "snowball earth" effect.
Similarly, we are faced with the inevitable fact of rising global temperatures. We need to see more effort toward coping with the results of this fact and less useless rhetoric. By useless rhetoric, I mean any discussion that focuses on the fantasy of conservation and emission reduction or sweeping social changes that make societies "green". Only a fool thinks that anything like that will actually happen and we need not suffer fools gladly.
Equally idiotic is the assumption of a Mad Max like disintegration of society. We'll simply continue burn fossil fuels, and emit green house gases, until it's no longer the cheapest thing to do; then we'll gradually turn to the next cheapest form of energy. (There may be a war between the Occident and the Orient before burning the last of the oil, but then again, maybe not. A lot has changed since the last world war and, for the first time ever, the entire world is now joined in a single economy. It might make more sense to divvy-up rather than duke-it-out. )
Thinking that environmental change and the exhaustion of carbon-based fossil fuels is the end of civilization, however, is just stupidly short sighted. We can't imagine the specific changes that will occur to support the future, but we can be sure that they will occur. If I were alive in New York city in 1889, and the only thing I knew about 100 years from then is that there would be over six million people working in Manhattan (in 1989), it would be easy for me to think that the biggest problem facing them would be the removal of the literally mountains of horse shit generated by their comings and goings.
Remember that every human being comes with not just a mouth to eat but also a brain to think and hands to work. It's much wiser to adjust our sails than to try to change the wind.
This goomba couldn't keep a handfull of "researchers" alive in a greenhouse for a couple of months. How's he going to mars? He's not. Ever. Period.
Wannabuyabridge???
The economic studies are always interesting to me and occasionally something will happen in-game that provides a quick "level check". Recently SOE published a new boxed version of Star Wars Galaxies which includes both of the add-ons, Jump to Lightspeed and Rage of the Wookies. As an incentive, SOE included a BARC speeder special item, from the last movie. The new speeder is the only new content in the box, so it's the only incentive for existing players to buy it. The BARC speeders immediately started selling for 3 million credits. Since the box is available for $30.00, the value of a SWG credit could easily be pegged at $0.00001. At least as of last week in the Intreped "galaxy".
Smiths nope. Unless you were rich, in which case you had actual education and intellectual opportunities, you did whatever you were _born_ to. If your family were farmers, you were a farmer, period. We tend to project our current state of affairs into our speculations about the past. This is fun, but it has no effect on history.
Until the very recent past, there were geniuses laying bricks and plowing fields because the simple fact was, no matter how smart you were, there was no opportunity to use your brain to make a living. Maybe you could invent a better way to lay bricks? Maybe, but remember, there have been many other brick layers smarter than you and they didn't.
If we're really honest, most of us, lucky as we are to be coding, are not really advancing the state of anything now. We're laying bricks. Granted with Java/C++/Python instead of clay and mud, but still laying bricks.
At least we got to choose to be brick layers.
The real problem is with the financial institution that will issue credit on the basis of minimal, easily obtainable and completely unverified personal identity. If banks were held criminally responsible for issuing credit cards to identity forgers (they are, after all, aiding and abetting theft) this problem would clear up in a couple of hours. Just threaten to lock the CEO of CitiBank up for six months and you know they'll stop issuing VISA cards to anyone with a driver's license and a relatively human-looking head. Sure, legitimate credit applicants would be inconvenienced by more thorough checks, but it would be a small price to pay compared to the months of sheer hell they go through now if their identity is successfully stolen.
According to Weekend Update anchor, Tina Fey (sp?) - "It's the little pink robot that cleans your noonie."
An abacus?!? Bah... Luxury!! There was 175 of us what had to climb up hill, 10 miles, everyday, to count on our fingers and toes, many of which had froze off in the winter, and we was glad to do it!! Oh yeah, and all we had to eat was cold poison!
Here's my equally viable idea - the astronauts could jump straight up from the top of a mountain, fart and flap their arms!! They could get to mars and back in two weeks, or a long weekend if they "bean up" just before lift off. Another fine example of your tax dollars pissed away.