Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools • Hacker News Board

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#171

Post by kdamken » Tue, May 24, 2016, 2:42 PM UTC

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…

To be fair - most people don't care about learning things they don't need or think they'll benefit from. Should these kids learn english? Of course, it's the most important language to know for international business and will help them greatly later on as adults.

But they're kids right now, and they don't need english in their daily lives, so most of them don't care.

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#172

Post by soundwave106 » Tue, May 24, 2016, 3:03 PM UTC

beambot wrote: post #37

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.

The first 'code' I wrote was probably logo writer (turtles!) In kindergarten. It was fun. Then we did HyperCard and built all sorts of fun interactive designs. Tldr: if kids can do art class, they can program and have fun doing it.

This exactly... my first "coding experience" in early-mid elementary school was "programming" magazine games (written in BASIC) into a TRS-80, as well as making cute animations in Logo on a TI 99/4A. Nothing ground-breaking, but there's incentives (fun!) and it introduces you to the principles.

For a modern equivalent, I've seen my sister's kids (also in early-mid elementary school) currently making games and animations in Scratch.

I'm sure it's easy to make coding dry and boring as well, of course.

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#173

Post by maze-le » Tue, May 24, 2016, 3:11 PM UTC

Zklsalue8 wrote: post #151

Math is such a wonderful and useful invention. Making people learn mathematics at school has made everyone love mathematics, take it up professionally, and become skilled mathematicians... You see my point. Most people hate math because of their experiences with it in school. I see the same thing happening with coding. It's gonna turn more people away from it than it ever turns onto it. May even do more net damage th…

I know what you mean, yet there are exceptionally good teachers, who can induce genuine curiosity on a subject, this is the reason why I don't hate math. So, I don't think the bleak picture you describe will be the norm...

I wonder however what methods, languages and 'best practices' will be used in the lessons. If you have a bad teacher or a bad curriculum and learn 'bad concepts' early enough, it might be hard for you to unlearn them later.

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#174

Post by allendoerfer » Tue, May 24, 2016, 3:55 PM UTC

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…

English skills of people in their early twenties still suck. There are programs in Japanese universities where foreigners teach locals English. Some of these teachers are from Australia, but for most of them English is not their first language either.

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#175

Post by dmix » Tue, May 24, 2016, 4:00 PM UTC

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…

> In Japan, English is already mandatory, yet, English fluency sucks.

I can related. French is similarly taught in Canadian schools in all English-speaking provinces and I don't know anyone in Ontario that went through those classes that can speak anything more than a few words.

In my otherwise quality public (catholic) schools the French class was seen as an extra recess where the teachers would always struggle to get the class to focus. The course was always dumbed-down as a result.

The only ones who have any proficiency have studied it outside of school or attended "French-immersion schools" (in Ontario).

The mandatory classes were a waste of time and tax money in my opinion.

Whether programming could succeed I'm not sure, but it shows that there has to be a strong interest from the students to really grasp it - because learning a language, and equally learning programming, requires a strong commitment.

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#176

Post by allendoerfer » Tue, May 24, 2016, 4:14 PM UTC

Zklsalue8 wrote: post #151

Math is such a wonderful and useful invention. Making people learn mathematics at school has made everyone love mathematics, take it up professionally, and become skilled mathematicians... You see my point. Most people hate math because of their experiences with it in school. I see the same thing happening with coding. It's gonna turn more people away from it than it ever turns onto it. May even do more net damage th…

Anecdote from my brother: He was struggling with French language classes (because he was lazy), so he switched schools to something you technical high school, where you would get less of a humanistic education (less history, less languages, less cultural stuff) and more technical topics.

He had learned to program by creating Minecraft plugins and really excelled there. Soon he was allowed to do homework of other subjects in the programming classes, because the teacher told him everything he could.

When I visit my parents I often give him some nudges like "yes, indentation does matter", or "or google design patterns", but I try not to tell him what to do, because of this: The other children in his programming class are just as miserable as he was in his French classes, failing easy tasks, because they are just not interested in them. While they will certainly learn on a basic level, how programming works so the won't think of Matrix screens like I imagine most others do, I don't think they will be able to grasp or remember concepts like OOP or even recursion.

I think schools should focus on getting the basics right and improving the chances of lower class children. When they have that covered (which is hard enough), they should just focus on accessibility and encouragement to get the children to find something they can be good in by themselves.

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#177

Post by peter303 » Tue, May 24, 2016, 4:21 PM UTC

danbruc wrote: post #112

I am torn. Did we do this before? Was it necessary before? Did we try to teach everyone how internal combustion engines or transistors work when they came up? There are of course always a lot of interested hobbyists when something new comes up but it seems the solution was mostly to hide the complexity and have professional car mechanics instead of making everyone an expert in the new technology. May programming be d…

Blame it on US coding promoters. Even Obama has paid lip service to this. Japan then feels like it is falling behind and must copy.

Japan is copied tech fad before, like AI and massive parallelism in the 1980s. And they fail at projects which arent feasible or they dont understand.

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#178

Post by GrammarNazi314 » Tue, May 24, 2016, 4:41 PM UTC

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 biggest issue I see so far is the lack of checking of foreign teachers, I work with a few whose work sheets for the students are riddled with spelling mistakes and bad grammar.

Since we're on the subject of bad grammar, this sentence is a comma splice. You should replace the comma after "teachers" with a semicolon or a period.

And I thought you were an English teacher!

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#179

Post by jxy » Tue, May 24, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

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…

This is one thing I don't understand. Why do you want them to speak fluent English?

If all your family, everyone you interact with, and all the media speak your native tongue, is speaking a fluent second language that important? How is your second language and how often do you use it?

Despite all the good researches have proven in bilingual people, the only advances, which I would consider a success, in second language educations, is that you can pick up the language much faster when you actually interact with a community that speaks this language.

Programming language, on the other hand, you can use it to create stuff, which makes it much easier to practice and improve. If the Japanese can add this curriculum without compromising their pupils's play time, it's going to be an easy success.

Now if they actually write

    2 3 加え

instead of

    2 + 3

I wouldn't care.

Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools

#180

Post by nihonde » Tue, May 24, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

programmer_dude wrote: post #56

nihonde wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a great point. My experience was the opposite. I desperately wanted to learn more about programming in junior high school, but the math teachers locked all the interesting computers up in their office and really didn't know much about them anyway. This was in the 1980's. Back then, computers were very tightly coupled with math and science, which was incredibly limiting for someone like me who didn't excel in…

> She gave me a C because she couldn't see my work. Remember when the system is unfair, cheating becomes fair. For example in this case you should have tried to update your program to produce a list of steps showing your work.

I learned my lesson...now all of my code prints writes detailed logs describing how it works. (Kidding.)