Passive aggressive preaching. If she REALLY wants to change things, offer to assist the computer department with digging up funding for a C based curriculum. It costs a lot of money for public schools to shift curriculum's.
To my daughter's high school programming teacher
131–140 of 596 posts
Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher
#132"how were you even able to make programming boring?" Puts into words the question I've been trying to ask some of my teachers for so long, but haven't been able to. I know programming isn't intrinsically interesting to everyone, but I think there is still magic to be found in seeing your instructions (in VB, Pascal, C, Logo, whatever) translated to something on the screen.
The basics are not always interesting, especially when you 'get them'. But its through this repetition you build upon the knowledge. Eventually every fancy thing falls back to the basics.
Think about Chemistry; the instructor can show all these cool reactions but you eventually have to sit down and mindlessly run through on paper the chemical reaction.
Now think programming-wise; I can show you wireless communication between two Arduinos and some XBee radios, but eventually you have to explain how variables are stored in memory, or how the communication is made, or some other basic.
Intro classes can be boring because there doesn't seem to be an endpoint, but that's why everyone encourages open source communities, they offer that real life feel to everything you learn.
Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher
#133I think the key point is having a zero harassment policy. It should not matter if the victim/subject of the harassment appears to be tolerating it (or even enjoying the attention). Chances are he/she is just being a good sport and is socially intimidated. The worst thing about harassment culture (even when it's largely good-natured) is that it creates and reinforces a power dynamic and subtle "law of the jungle" stat…
Nah. Nothing about this course was done well. No competent teacher needs a policy to notice or stop crap like this. Here you have some time-serving cypher filling a slot to help the administration check a box. With everything else done so thoughtlessly, why would we expect them to perk up and get intraclass dynamics right? Even if you exerted enough political pressure to suppress _this_ stuff, it would still be a bad…
You probably didn't go to public school(/end ad hominem). The teacher are so dense that you need rules like that so the parents have something to point to when their kids come home and tell them they are being harassed.
Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
With regards to your third point: Is there a modern (or better suited for introductory courses) language that has the kind of curriculums built around it that VB and Java do? Codecademy and the like are awesome for independent learning and exploration, but it doesn't work for classroom instruction. There don't seem to be many curriculums designed around modern, web-focused languages like Ruby or Javascript that your…
I think JavaScript fits the bill. I never took programming in high school, so maybe I'm setting my sights low...but even with a well developed curriculum, it's hard to imagine that the class gets very far. Whereas with JavaScript, they can literally start executing code as soon as they open their browsers. I think that makes up, at least a little, of the time lost in not having as mature of a curriculum. But I think…
I'd tend to agree with you. But the problem of teaching it still remains. While it'd be great for dedicated teachers at each school to create a flexible, Javascript-based curriculum built around online courses and projects, I think the reality is that very few would have the time, energy, or motivation to do so. So far as I know, there don't exist very many Javascript textbooks aimed at the high school, middle school, and (hopefully) elementary school levels. Without that kind of traditional material, it's difficult for even passionate teachers to get classes approved by administrators.
Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Minority entities will be teased practically any time they exist, regardless of sector or age, and they need to be taught to handle it well. Yeah? So this high school programming class isn't so much a programming class as a crash course in coping mechanisms for gender-based harassment? Please. It's the educator's job to create a safe space for, you know, education--for every student in the class, not just the privi…
>Which real world are you advocating this high school programming class introduce to a 16-year-old girl? The real world where HR thought police aren't sitting in every room of every company. The real world where even HR people try to "make jokes" and be funny. The real world where HR people generally judge the severity of a harassment complaint by favoritism, which reality a blunt HR person (not employed at my curren…
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why 16-year-old girls leave programming. Remember, guys ganging up on you and telling them to make them a sandwich is just funny! You're so thin-skinned, ladies! thought police!
http://hoydenabouttown.com/20110218.9512/sexist-joke-bingo/
...almost got bingo... good work, cookiecaper.
Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is about the student's experience reflected in the eyes of a mother. Parents are not known for their objectivity when it comes to children, but in this case the (rather far fetched) idea that the evil boys and their sandwich jokes made her daughter dislike programming found fertile ground in the whole "designated victim" narrative of women in online environments. There is no violence and rape in this story, there'…
You must have had one horrific childhood if your bar for "nothing wrong at school" is "no violence or rape". If you ever have kids, I hope you aim a little higher for them.
A school with "no violence or rape" wouldn't be just nothing wrong, it would be extraordinary. Even elite schools in developed and rich countries are filled with bullying: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/28/swedish-school-... Maybe you really ought to think about which school you went into in which neighborhood, which social clique you were a part of and if you still think no bullying happened, maybe it's time to think back on school and reevaluate some of your actions (hint: pranks and teasing might not be seen as that after all).
Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher
#137I definitely see why he chose Visual Basic - you get to drag and drop windows and little buttons around and can take periodic breaks in btw churning out code to play with UI.
Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher
#138So, was this article about the student's experience or the mother's? Because it reads like it's about the mother. The guys in class suggested that their peer go make a sandwich. That's the only accusation actually made against the class and the teacher. While I don't endorse such teasing, it's certainly in no way specific to computer programming, and it's not anything like the intensity one would expect when trolls f…
I agree. While gender-related issues in the software industry are important and worth talking about, this article seems to have pretty little justification. I was in high school a few years ago. Put that many teenagers in a room and of course they're going to fuck with each other. I've heard sandwich jokes made in liberal arts classes, biology classes, even a badminton class--which also had only one girl in it. The t…
>the takeaway is that high schoolers are dicks. //
Sure. But not exclusively [which I know you weren't claiming].
I had some pretty degrading and misandrist remarks made about me in situations with lots of women in; where I've been the only man (mothers, women of an age to marry and more mature women too).
I think these things are a lot about group dynamics.
Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah. Nothing about this course was done well. No competent teacher needs a policy to notice or stop crap like this. Here you have some time-serving cypher filling a slot to help the administration check a box. With everything else done so thoughtlessly, why would we expect them to perk up and get intraclass dynamics right? Even if you exerted enough political pressure to suppress _this_ stuff, it would still be a bad…
You probably didn't go to public school(/end ad hominem). The teacher are so dense that you need rules like that so the parents have something to point to when their kids come home and tell them they are being harassed.
One, if the teacher is that dense, then the key problem isn't the rules, is it?
Two, yeah, I went to public school. I've seen all sorts of well meaning "policy announcements" that hack solutions to glaring embarrassments without doing anything about the underlying problems.
Re: To my daughter's high school programming teacher
#140Background: Currently teaching Intro to Programming using VB (not even 2012... cause our lead instructor's textbook is for 2010). I created a stir when I suggested we move to C, which we are next semester. Many of people have already commented on this, but from my understanding, this parent did NOTHING and it going a passive-aggressive route to complain. Going into the article, I was excited to read it initially beca…
>Many of people have already commented on this, but from my understanding, this parent did NOTHING and it going a passive-aggressive route to complain.
Did we read the same article?
>I consulted with friends — female developers — and talked to my daughter about how to handle the situation in class. I suggested that she talk to you. I offered to talk to you. I offered to come talk to the class. I offered to send one of my male friends, perhaps a well-known local programmer, to go talk to the class.
Unless I'm misunderstanding, the author claims to have spoken to the teacher and offer solutions... then writes a letter clearly outlining more solutions.
>Without getting into anymore of a rant, VB isn't bad, per say... it teaches variables, loops, and conditionals, the basics of any intro class. I'd only have a problem with this if it was a high-level college course.
Going to have to agree with you here. I think the teacher is going to have a much better impact than the language involved. For example, a friend and classmate took a Java course during high school. The teacher did nothing but force them to copy programs out of the book. I took a VB course and learned quite a bit. By the end of the class, I was writing games in my down time (pong, asteroids, a raycasting engine, etc.)