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Everyone should get the opportunity to program, but school is a waste of time

philliphaydon.com

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Re: Everyone should get the opportunity to program, but school is a waste of time

#11

Post by gazrogers »

barry-cotter wrote: post #5

School is not about education, it is about childcare and about indoctrination and socialisation. Some education occurs but that's not what school is for .School is for getting people to do as they're told, when they're told to, for inuring people to being ranked and judged. http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

What utter crap. Would you rather go back to the time when only the children of the wealthy would be educated by private tutors and the children of the poor (who couldn't afford to have their children educated to even basic standards) went into work as soon as they were able? Without school how do those kids get an education? Their parents are probably working all hours to make ends meet so they won't be able to provide the basic numeracy and literacy skills a child needs to function in society.

Re: Everyone should get the opportunity to program, but school is a waste of time

#12

Post by NateDad »

barry-cotter wrote: post #5

School is not about education, it is about childcare and about indoctrination and socialisation. Some education occurs but that's not what school is for .School is for getting people to do as they're told, when they're told to, for inuring people to being ranked and judged. http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

Yeah, and the moon landing was faked, and there's fluoride in the water to keep us all meek. Right. Cause we're obviously all so good at doing what we're told in this country. OH WAIT.

Re: Everyone should get the opportunity to program, but school is a waste of time

#13

Post by mu_killnine »

People are welcome to their cynical, paranoid opinions but there are good educators (not just teachers) out there. Phillip's data set is approximately one point yet, from this, he concludes the whole system needs to be scrapped?

It's popular to dump on education but for anyone to conclude that the entire system is unusable and needs to be destroyed is silly. For some people, like myself, I fit right into the education system as it exists.

The holy grail of education is a system that is agile enough to cater to the myriad learning styles and goals of students. This isn't a novel idea but obviously the challenge is in implementation.

Everyone's entitled to their two minute hate but it'd be a much more interesting article if he posed some solutions. It would also show he's more than an armchair quarterback with an axe to grind against an old english teacher.

Re: Everyone should get the opportunity to program, but school is a waste of time

#14

Post by anthonyarroyo »

"Schooling in general is a waste of time because it caters to this idea that life evolves around English, Math, Art, Science and General Knowledge. But real life doesn’t, and these things don’t help children figure out what they are good at or enjoy."

Sorry to nitpick, but how can life not evolve around General Knowledge which, ostensibly, includes all knowledge. Agree with the sentiment, disagree with the argument.

"The greatest disservice to a cause is to defend it with poor arguments." -- Some Famous Guy Dead Guy Who Couldn't Program

Re: Everyone should get the opportunity to program, but school is a waste of time

#15

Post by NateDad »

philliphaydon wrote: post #10
NateDad wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree less. If you can't write a proper essay, then you can't write a paper on the new algorithm you invented, you can't write legible documentation for the library you wrote, and you can't argue effectively about the merits of one technology vs. another (change out the terminology for whatever communication is required in your field). Basic math (up to and including algebra and geometry) is used all the t…

I'm not suggesting we don't teach kids Math/English, I still think that is important, but the approach we take by shoving kids the same age in the same class doesn't work. Some kids learn faster than others, we shouldn't hold some kids back simply because they are years younger than other kids. If a 7yo is racing through maths and enjoys it, put him with kids of his skill level, when you put a 7yo who is already year…

You're not wrong... but doing that right, over an entire population is really hard. I think there is some attempt to do this in many schools. Kids skip grades, kids stay back. There's honors programs and remedial programs.

Honestly, I think the main reason we aren't doing better educating our kids is because no one wants to pay for it. Education is expensive. Rigorous testing of methodologies and re-educating teachers is expensive. We pay our teachers a pittance... I don't know how anyone expects education to be great when we aren't trying to attract brilliant people with high salaries.

Re: Everyone should get the opportunity to program, but school is a waste of time

#16

Post by cpursley »

gazrogers wrote: post #11
barry-cotter wrote: post #5

School is not about education, it is about childcare and about indoctrination and socialisation. Some education occurs but that's not what school is for .School is for getting people to do as they're told, when they're told to, for inuring people to being ranked and judged. http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

What utter crap. Would you rather go back to the time when only the children of the wealthy would be educated by private tutors and the children of the poor (who couldn't afford to have their children educated to even basic standards) went into work as soon as they were able? Without school how do those kids get an education? Their parents are probably working all hours to make ends meet so they won't be able to prov…

The problem is, just because they sit there all day long doesn't mean these kids are getting an education (in American schools). My wife is a teacher, it's 80% babysitting and discipline.

Re: Everyone should get the opportunity to program, but school is a waste of time

#17

Post by philliphaydon »

anthonyarroyo wrote: post #14

"Schooling in general is a waste of time because it caters to this idea that life evolves around English, Math, Art, Science and General Knowledge. But real life doesn’t, and these things don’t help children figure out what they are good at or enjoy." Sorry to nitpick, but how can life not evolve around General Knowledge which, ostensibly, includes all knowledge. Agree with the sentiment, disagree with the argument.…

Maybe generalizing like that is bad.

Take English for example: In school we used to analyze poems from World War 1 / 2, and we had to explain why the poet used this word, that sentence, this style, etc.

The truth is, there's no English Answer. The person wrote what he felt, what he smelt, saw, heard, etc. He felt that those words and sentences best described the what he wanted to say.

Yet we butcher these poems on speculation and assumptions. We don't learn anything from this in my opinion. The entire process of analyzing books/poems/movies in English class is silly.

With math we are forced to learn how to measure the volume of a triangle... Sure there may be some time in life where you might put this to use, but MOST people would never need to know this type of math, we need to instill general maths but we need to de-emphasize math and allow kids to focus on things they are interested in and allow them to be creative and learn to their full potential, if that means they want to go learn advanced math! By all means let them!

Re: Everyone should get the opportunity to program, but school is a waste of time

#18

Post by barry-cotter »

gazrogers wrote: post #11
barry-cotter wrote: post #5

School is not about education, it is about childcare and about indoctrination and socialisation. Some education occurs but that's not what school is for .School is for getting people to do as they're told, when they're told to, for inuring people to being ranked and judged. http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

What utter crap. Would you rather go back to the time when only the children of the wealthy would be educated by private tutors and the children of the poor (who couldn't afford to have their children educated to even basic standards) went into work as soon as they were able? Without school how do those kids get an education? Their parents are probably working all hours to make ends meet so they won't be able to prov…

It takes fifty contact hours to teach the average nine year old to read. I can't recall how long basic arithmetic takes but it's unlikely to take more than ten times that. 550/40 would be very, very approximately one school year. We just covered basic numeracy and literacy. Now we can talk about how all modern school systems are descended from ones designed to produce soldiers. [ htt//www.nber.org/papers/w18049 ]

If we must have a place to park children if we want their parents to work why can't it be like Summerhill, and not somewhere children are made to sit still, be quiet, do as you're told, stop doing it when I say stop? [ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School ]

If school is about education why does it start two to four hours too early for adolescents to learn at their best and why do they get homework in all subjects when the only subjects that show positive effects from homework wre math and cognate subjects?

Re: Everyone should get the opportunity to program, but school is a waste of time

#19

Post by effbott »

This is a reoccurring theme on HN and in the programming subculture in general: rowdy kid drops out of school, gets written off by well-meaning adults, learns to program, goes on to start a highly successful tech business, and then writes a blog post railing against the school system.

While I totally agree that the schooling system is outdated and primarily a way to socialize children, what programmers tend to forget is that we have a very special profession that has both low barriers of entry and high pay. Literally anyone who has access to a computer can learn to program. This is not the case in most professions! While aspiring programmers can tinker around with Linux in their spare time, an aspiring doctor can't tinker with a cadaver without being in school. As programmers we are extremely lucky that all the tools we could ever need are free and on the web.

Re: Everyone should get the opportunity to program, but school is a waste of time

#20

Post by lutusp »

anthonyarroyo wrote: post #14

"Schooling in general is a waste of time because it caters to this idea that life evolves around English, Math, Art, Science and General Knowledge. But real life doesn’t, and these things don’t help children figure out what they are good at or enjoy." Sorry to nitpick, but how can life not evolve around General Knowledge which, ostensibly, includes all knowledge. Agree with the sentiment, disagree with the argument.…

> Sorry to nitpick, but how can life not evolve around General Knowledge which, ostensibly, includes all knowledge.

The answer is obvious -- most of those who excel, who create breakthroughs, do it by specializing. This is not argue against general knowledge, only to say that specialization is an element of nearly every success story and scientific breakthrough.

There's even a new psychological theory about specializing, that celebrates focusing on a few things, or one -- it's called "Grit":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait)

"Grit in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive trait, based on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term goal or endstate coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective."

An example would be Albert Einstein working alone for years on his relativity theory, to the exclusion of any other activities.

But, just to prove how consistent psychologists are, the exact same behavior can get you an Asperger's diagnosis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome

"... an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests."

These two theories describe the exact same behavior -- intense focus and specialization, but come to opposite conclusions -- it's good. No, wait, it's bad.

Given that there are two opposing but equally plausible psychological theories about this kind of personal focus, guess which historical figure is now diagnosed with Asperger's? Albert Einstein. Along with Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson, and Bill Gates.

More here: http://arachnoid.com/building_science

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