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Teaching how to code is broken

neil.computer

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Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#241

Post by Cupertino95014 »

oriolid wrote: post #240
Cupertino95014 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're picking up basketball at age 30, I hope you know that you're never going to be anywhere nearly as good as Curry, or Lebron Well, I hope so, too. However, in basketball, the really good players aren't even going to let you play with them, so you're forced to play with people your own level. In music, you're constantly hearing 8-year-olds who are better than you will ever be. I believe it's the motor skills…

In music there's also the stubborn belief that anyone who's older than 8 is too old to learn, and the idea that the goal of music lessons is to train professional musicians and anyone over 8 is not going to be ready at college age and has to pick a different job anyway.

No, I don't think there is. In my area (heavily Chinese), parents seem to believe, fervently, that children should learn an instrument. Especially girls.

Lots of parents think it's important for their kids to learn music, actually, with no thought that they'll become professionals. In fact, most of them would be horrified if that happened.

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#242

Post by jodrellblank »

WalterBright wrote: post #144
jodrellblank wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/watches straw man fall over without putting up a fight. Would you rather work with someone who added a major subsystem to one of your compilers for fun or someone who had never coded but could recite the ISO standard by heart? Who believes the former person “would not be able to answer questions about [the subject]”? If measurements tend to become targets over time then the goal of “develop expertise” measured by “p…

> Who believes the former person “would not be able to answer questions about [the subject]”? All the people who believe that "teaching the test" is not real knowledge. For example, would you hire a lawyer who flunked the bar? How about consult a physician who couldn't pass his medical boards? How about get on an airplane with a pilot who flunked flight school, but "really knows how to fly"? And yes, there are bad te…

Take all 8 billion human shapes, four right angle corners and straight sides is the test, all sides the same length is expertise. You're saying that all squares are definitely rectangles, which I agree with. I'm saying all rectangles aren't necessarily squares. Then it feels like you're saying there aren't many more rectangles than squares, citing that there are unquestionably squares. Unstated I'm suggesting there are a lot more rectangles than squares, by Sturgeons Law 95% of tests are crud, so there are far more people who passed a test than there are people who passed a test and have expertise. There are so many people in IT with coworkers who passed MCSE or A+ tests but cannot do what the test said they can do that it has become a meme, for one example.

That 5% of tests are rigorous and accurately identify squares is not really something I question, but I might question that the people who pass them were "taught to take the test" and nothing else.

(Would you say 7 years of degree, medical school, hospital residency, rotation around departments, counts as "teaching to the test", i.e. "an unhealthy focus on excessive repetition of simple, isolated skills ("drill and kill") [which] limits the teacher's ability to foster a holistic understanding of the subject matter."? - from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaching_to_the_test )

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#243

Post by oriolid »

Cupertino95014 wrote: post #241
oriolid wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In music there's also the stubborn belief that anyone who's older than 8 is too old to learn, and the idea that the goal of music lessons is to train professional musicians and anyone over 8 is not going to be ready at college age and has to pick a different job anyway.

No, I don't think there is. In my area (heavily Chinese), parents seem to believe, fervently, that children should learn an instrument. Especially girls. Lots of parents think it's important for their kids to learn music, actually, with no thought that they'll become professionals. In fact, most of them would be horrified if that happened.

From my perspective that's some kind of weird Chinese thing. For a different view, you could for example look at the discussion at https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/120433/why-don-t-p.... It's a long thread, but search for "professional" and you'll find the same by multiple posters. There's also an interesting conflict of interest between students, their parents and music schools.

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#244

Post by nitwit005 »

mcs_ wrote: post #220
nitwit005 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enthusiasm is perhaps the easiest thing to fake in an interview, and something many of us fake automatically, as smiling and seeming engaged is something a lot of us learn to do when meeting new people. I doubt it correlates with productivity outside of something like a sales role. Most of the world's work seems to get done by people who don't appear particularly enthused.

> Most of the world's work seems to get done by people who don't appear particularly enthused. Interesting! Can you share some sources to get deeper here? Until now, I thought apathy wasn't a sign of productivity.

Consult your own memory? Not being enthused doesn't imply you're totally apathetic. We all do plenty of things we don't enjoy, and aren't interested in, because it needs to get done.

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#245

Post by WalterBright »

jodrellblank wrote: post #242
WalterBright wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who believes the former person “would not be able to answer questions about [the subject]”? All the people who believe that "teaching the test" is not real knowledge. For example, would you hire a lawyer who flunked the bar? How about consult a physician who couldn't pass his medical boards? How about get on an airplane with a pilot who flunked flight school, but "really knows how to fly"? And yes, there are bad te…

Take all 8 billion human shapes, four right angle corners and straight sides is the test, all sides the same length is expertise. You're saying that all squares are definitely rectangles, which I agree with. I'm saying all rectangles aren't necessarily squares. Then it feels like you're saying there aren't many more rectangles than squares, citing that there are unquestionably squares. Unstated I'm suggesting there a…

If you cannot answer questions about a subject then you haven't mastered it, holistic or not.

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#246

Post by jodrellblank »

WalterBright wrote: post #245
jodrellblank wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take all 8 billion human shapes, four right angle corners and straight sides is the test, all sides the same length is expertise. You're saying that all squares are definitely rectangles, which I agree with. I'm saying all rectangles aren't necessarily squares. Then it feels like you're saying there aren't many more rectangles than squares, citing that there are unquestionably squares. Unstated I'm suggesting there a…

If you cannot answer questions about a subject then you haven't mastered it, holistic or not.

Again you're repeating the assertion "if you have expertise you can answer questions", "squares are rectangles", which isn't the point of contention.

It's the other way which is in question, "if you can answer questions, does that mean you definitely have expertise?". Is being able to answer questions the same as having expertise? Are there people who CAN answer questions but have no expertise? If so, how many?

Referencing your other pilot comment, is being able to say what action you should take in an emergency, the same thing as having the calmness and presence of mind and judgement to actually take that action in an emergency instead of locking up and forgetting and panicking? Certainly the pilot who does act well in an emergency could tell you about it, but can all the people who can tell you about it, do it?

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#247

Post by Cupertino95014 »

oriolid wrote: post #243
Cupertino95014 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think there is. In my area (heavily Chinese), parents seem to believe, fervently, that children should learn an instrument. Especially girls. Lots of parents think it's important for their kids to learn music, actually, with no thought that they'll become professionals. In fact, most of them would be horrified if that happened.

From my perspective that's some kind of weird Chinese thing. For a different view, you could for example look at the discussion at https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/120433/why-don-t-p... . It's a long thread, but search for "professional" and you'll find the same by multiple posters. There's also an interesting conflict of interest between students, their parents and music schools.

My teacher had 12 adults and 28 kids. We had our recitals separately. The adults were maybe 9 white & 3 Chinese.

But one time I saw the student list for the kids. Every single one was Chinese.

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#248

Post by Cupertino95014 »

oriolid wrote: post #243
Cupertino95014 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think there is. In my area (heavily Chinese), parents seem to believe, fervently, that children should learn an instrument. Especially girls. Lots of parents think it's important for their kids to learn music, actually, with no thought that they'll become professionals. In fact, most of them would be horrified if that happened.

From my perspective that's some kind of weird Chinese thing. For a different view, you could for example look at the discussion at https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/120433/why-don-t-p... . It's a long thread, but search for "professional" and you'll find the same by multiple posters. There's also an interesting conflict of interest between students, their parents and music schools.

Just got around to looking at that Stack Exchange thread, and I'm reminded why I dislike that site so much:

It's full of PLPs (Pedantic Little People, or you can substitute a different P-word for "people"). And why is it full of PLPs? They get little brownie points for answering, and when you get to certain levels, then you're allowed to do even more! So they compete with each other and downvote your answer for, well, pedantic reasons.

I suppose this site has some of that, but it's not nearly as obnoxious.

Anyhow: I finally found a teacher who played standards, and actually studied with George Shearing! But they're few & far between.

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#249

Post by bdowling »

xmprt wrote: post #124
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #108

I must share the very wonderful video by Seymour Papert on teaching LOGO. He makes a similar observation: imagine if we taught people dancing by sitting them at a desk and explaining all the steps to them, making them memorize them and write them down, but they were never allowed to actually move or try the steps. We find when teaching people a language for example that immersion works very well. So Papert suggests t…

Missing from those analysis is the fact that not everyone has it in them to learn to code like that. I've genuinely tried learning to dance before with practice and I just sucked at it so I put it down and picked up another hobby. Yet in today's world we have this obsession with getting everyone to learn how to program in python. Instead we could be teaching the actual skills like critical thinking and problem solvin…

For someone who can think critically and solve problems, translating a solution into Python is the easy part.

Re: Teaching how to code is broken

#250

Post by WalterBright »

jodrellblank wrote: post #246
WalterBright wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you cannot answer questions about a subject then you haven't mastered it, holistic or not.

Again you're repeating the assertion "if you have expertise you can answer questions", "squares are rectangles", which isn't the point of contention. It's the other way which is in question, "if you can answer questions, does that mean you definitely have expertise?". Is being able to answer questions the same as having expertise? Are there people who CAN answer questions but have no expertise? If so, how many? Refer…

Please read carefully. I never said passing a test is proof of mastery. I said failing the test means no mastery.

Putting it in terms of logic, (A implies B) does not mean that ((not A) implies (not B)).

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