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Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

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Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#91

Post by laurieg »

unabst wrote: post #82
smegel wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yet, English fluency sucks That is totally not my experience. I have travelled widely in Asia and Japan easily had the best English fluency across a range of people I conversed with (well apart from Singapore but that doesn't count). Compared to Korea/Taiwan, Japan was a breeze, even in HK I had trouble with shopkeeps outside of areas heavily frequented by westerners. I travelled to some pretty far flung areas of J…

You are correct that almost everybody is familiar with English, but that's not speaking it, let alone being fluent. To a degree, English already is part of the Japanese culture and language. But it's a different English. Some of it is compatible, but native speakers are the one's graciously degrading (to use a web programming term) to meet their level, and not them meeting you at a level you're accustomed to speaking…

Japan is a strange case. On one hand, if you ask an average person a simple question in English, something like "What did you do yesterday?" they won't be able to parse the question let alone produce a response. On the other hand, if you ask them to translate a bunch of tricky words from English to Japanese or Japanese to English they will happily churn through them. "Politician", "weapon", "credit", no problem.

It's all an artifact of their teaching methods and tests.

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#92

Post by leichtgewicht »

smegel wrote: post #72
unabst wrote: post #68

In Japan, English is already mandatory, yet, English fluency sucks. Japan recognizes the problem, but doesn't know what to do about it. Basically, English education has yet to succeed. [1][2] This is the thing about Japan. They can make these moves that are incredibly progressive and ambitious -- visionary even, yet, they really have no idea how to go about doing it. As it stands, they don't have enough teachers that…

> yet, English fluency sucks That is totally not my experience. I have travelled widely in Asia and Japan easily had the best English fluency across a range of people I conversed with (well apart from Singapore but that doesn't count). Compared to Korea/Taiwan, Japan was a breeze, even in HK I had trouble with shopkeeps outside of areas heavily frequented by westerners. I travelled to some pretty far flung areas of J…

Personal experience doesn't always reflect averages: According to the EPI Japan is #30: http://www.ef.edu/epi

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#93

Post by venomsnake »

ekianjo wrote: post #46
quxbar wrote: post #23

Wow, in 20 years Japan will be producing some amazing technology. I think people underestimate how transformative an understanding of programmatic problem solving can be. I'd put it only slightly under literacy.

We had mandatory programming in france 30 years ago it did not create a generation of little geniuses.

And in Eastern Europe we had a system of dedicated STEM schools that took kids with aptitude to extend their abilities and now the region is an IT powerhouse. YMMV.

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#94

Post by _yosefk »

quxbar wrote: post #23

Wow, in 20 years Japan will be producing some amazing technology. I think people underestimate how transformative an understanding of programmatic problem solving can be. I'd put it only slightly under literacy.

I think programmers overestimate the value of programmatic problem solving. IMO it's slightly under understanding how cars work (something I have no idea about and as a result, I waste money on new leased cars so as to avoid maintaining older ones), nowhere near as useful as literacy or basic arithmetic. The reason is that contrary to Alan Kay's opinion, computers not just aren't, but can't be usefully applied by most people without a lot of professional programmers providing them with software for the task at hand.

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#95

Post by laurieg »

marak830 wrote: post #76
unabst wrote: post #68

In Japan, English is already mandatory, yet, English fluency sucks. Japan recognizes the problem, but doesn't know what to do about it. Basically, English education has yet to succeed. [1][2] This is the thing about Japan. They can make these moves that are incredibly progressive and ambitious -- visionary even, yet, they really have no idea how to go about doing it. As it stands, they don't have enough teachers that…

As an English teacher I'm seeing a lot of change in the new generation of teachers. I teach high school student part time (so I can work on my side project), and the teachers over the age of 40ish have pretty terrible English(these are English teachers), but all of the newer ones have pretty good levels. I have even been notified a few teachers are going to the US for a few weeks to get immersed in English as a sort…

The assistant language teacher programme has to be blamed in part for these teachers. For those who don't know, Japan imports lots and lots of young people to be assistant language teachers for 1-5 years. They provide them with very little training and the quality varies wildly. Some are excellent teachers and essentially run classes. Others are "human tape recorders" and just provide pronunciation models for pupils.

After this programme was found to be not having much of a positive effective, the government decided to double the number of teachers they ship in from other countries.

I think they could improve English education in a number of ways: Either train up the teachers from abroad more thoroughly and give them a chance to stay much longer or send all Japanese people who teach English to study abroad for a extended period.

Edit: auto-correct glitches

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#96

Post by laurieg »

Olscore wrote: post #8

This may not be a good idea. Code is one of those things that by itself sucks until you have a reason or purpose to use it. I started learning coding around age ~9 in 1996 or so. But what got me hooked was websites, because I could use the code to build fan sites or accomplish real, purposeful tasks. I feel like just shoving code at kids isn't going to do much unless they are also incentivized to use it somehow.

Not all children will grow up to be programmers, but more and more will be information workers that will need to know what kind of tasks can be solved with programming.

In a previous company the requests from non-developers ranged in complexity from simple string processing to multi-year research projects that still might not bear fruit.

You wouldn't ask a mechanic to build a flying car in an afternoon, but people still ask programmers to perform such tasks.

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#97

Post by [deleted] »

mikekchar wrote: post #83
unabst wrote: post #68

In Japan, English is already mandatory, yet, English fluency sucks. Japan recognizes the problem, but doesn't know what to do about it. Basically, English education has yet to succeed. [1][2] This is the thing about Japan. They can make these moves that are incredibly progressive and ambitious -- visionary even, yet, they really have no idea how to go about doing it. As it stands, they don't have enough teachers that…

I don't know when you taught here, so hard to say but a couple of things have changed in the last 10 years or so. First, they have introduced a "foreign language" class for elementary school children. I know some people who have taught it and they have a lot of praise for the program. It focusses on simply interacting with foreigners and includes many different languages. Personally, I've noticed a big difference in…

[deleted]

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#98

Post by laurieg »

gsam wrote: post #86
unabst wrote: post #68

In Japan, English is already mandatory, yet, English fluency sucks. Japan recognizes the problem, but doesn't know what to do about it. Basically, English education has yet to succeed. [1][2] This is the thing about Japan. They can make these moves that are incredibly progressive and ambitious -- visionary even, yet, they really have no idea how to go about doing it. As it stands, they don't have enough teachers that…

>I guarantee you the smarter students will be correcting their teachers and making a mockery of them Like what happens already with exceptional students for any subject. The fact that a number of teachers are barely ahead of their own material is nothing particularly new.

Actually in Japan, I could easily see students being mocked for correcting the teacher.

A little story from a Japanese friend who was fluent in English: He, of course, had to take elementary English in school. The teacher was teaching family members and asked "What do you call your grandfather's father?" He replied "I think it's great-grandfather" The teacher laughed at him, causing the whole class to laugh at him. "Of course not, it's grand-grandfather" the teacher replied.

Being a humble guy he assumed he was wrong, but checked it in a dictionary after class and showed the teacher. "Oh, well then you can say that as well" snapped the teacher.

I'm not suggesting this is every teacher in Japan, but from the mere fact that a child fluent in English has to take a class where they learn "This is a pen" shows you how rigid and ill-thought out the system is.

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#99

Post by marak830 »

laurieg wrote: post #95
marak830 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an English teacher I'm seeing a lot of change in the new generation of teachers. I teach high school student part time (so I can work on my side project), and the teachers over the age of 40ish have pretty terrible English(these are English teachers), but all of the newer ones have pretty good levels. I have even been notified a few teachers are going to the US for a few weeks to get immersed in English as a sort…

The assistant language teacher programme has to be blamed in part for these teachers. For those who don't know, Japan imports lots and lots of young people to be assistant language teachers for 1-5 years. They provide them with very little training and the quality varies wildly. Some are excellent teachers and essentially run classes. Others are "human tape recorders" and just provide pronunciation models for pupils.…

I think you are spot on with that. The amount of training I received was very very minimal. My current company gave us one day training - most of that time was doing paperwork for the company. While I'm experienced(just over 4 years now), there were quite a few first time teachers.

As an ALT I have seen some pretty badly run English programs in the school(eg I turn up, and they have no idea what class they want me to assist with, or leaving me for hours without work to-do - I generally try and make worksheets, lesson plans or extra material for the students to read around the subject matter, but that very rare gets used at some places.

I have even been at a school where all the English teachers were on holiday, no one really spoke English in the school and had no classes for 4 hours. It can get a little depressing.

But other English programs are amazing, one of my current schools I have written at least 40 pages of material to assist the students/extra study(voluntary), and they have informed the students, who contacted me directly for copies of that work. (I wish I was at this schoolfull time!).

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#100

Post by marak830 »

broodbucket wrote: post #88
marak830 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha I'm on a train and autocorrect is a bit of a bitch :-p (That actually scares the crap out of me, missing something like that on something I give the students)

Programmers make mistakes all the time, so I suppose it's fair that English teachers can screw up English :)

I'm a programmer too :-p does that mean I can make double?
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