Could someone fix the title? There is nothing about enforcing, this won't be mandatory (and may not even be available in all schools).
Learning “computer code” will be offered in French primary schools
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Re: Learning “computer code” will be offered in French primary schools
#32Don't force, please. Period.
Re: Learning “computer code” will be offered in French primary schools
#33Quick summary : The french government wants to add non compulsory computer science in primary school ( age 6 to 10 ) where the lessons are up to the teacher. For secondary school ( age 11 to 15 ) programming will be added to the schedules, these lectures will probably be made by math and technology teachers. Personal opinion : While this is a nice step forward, I really fear the teachers will lack formation resulting…
What is it a step forward for? A popular opinion on HN seems to be that programming should be taught in schools because it's somehow a new basic skill everyone should have? I have to disagree and don't see it being a step forward for anything. Programming after hours, taught as a kind of extracurricular activity seems sufficient to me. There's no need to know how to program a computer. Knowing how to use a computer is the important skill. You don't need to know how to rebuild a transmission to drive a car in the same way you don't need to know how to build a web page to know how to input text into form fields and click a submit button. Those who are curious and interested will learn to build the things we use while others will find it more than enough to simply to know how to use the things the rest of us have built.
I, like anyone else here, am super passionate about programming and it thrills me to be able to make a computer do my bidding but my friends and family don't care how the computer works. That's okay. I know a carpenter. I love living in a well built home but don't really care to know how to build one. Knowing how to work a stud finder to hang a painting is enough for me.
Re: Learning “computer code” will be offered in French primary schools
#34Quick summary : The french government wants to add non compulsory computer science in primary school ( age 6 to 10 ) where the lessons are up to the teacher. For secondary school ( age 11 to 15 ) programming will be added to the schedules, these lectures will probably be made by math and technology teachers. Personal opinion : While this is a nice step forward, I really fear the teachers will lack formation resulting…
What is it a step forward for? A popular opinion on HN seems to be that programming should be taught in schools because it's somehow a new basic skill everyone should have? I have to disagree and don't see it being a step forward for anything. Programming after hours, taught as a kind of extracurricular activity seems sufficient to me. There's no need to know how to program a computer. Knowing how to use a computer i…
Not to mention the common argument that "ubiquitous computing will necessitate that everyone have a high degree of technical literacy" is false. Computers are heading from becoming tools to appliances and circuits. You'll never interact with most of them directly, and when you do, it'll be through an abstracted shell or interface of some sort. The actual internals will be arcane to most, running some form of Contiki, QNX, specifically tailored variant of embedded Linux, or whatnot.
We're already seeing this happen with smartphones and tablets. They offer an ecosystem of applications and network-enabled technologies that are useful to users, but in the end, they're digital handcuffs.
The practical benefits of teaching programming will be outweighed by the sheer incompetence and farcical mess that compromises public education in general. There's no way I, personally, can trust such a system to make anything worthwhile of this.
Re: Learning “computer code” will be offered in French primary schools
#35Google Translated to English: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...
Re: Learning “computer code” will be offered in French primary schools
#36Google Translated to English: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...
Thanks. Hacker News is an English-language site. This is not to disparage content in other languages; it's just what the site is. Posts not in English will mostly be demoted, unless they're of major significance and not available in translation.
Re: Learning “computer code” will be offered in French primary schools
#37Could someone fix the title? There is nothing about enforcing, this won't be mandatory (and may not even be available in all schools).
We've attempted to.
Re: Learning “computer code” will be offered in French primary schools
#38I learned basic electric circuitry in primary school in basically the same context (extra-curricular activity the hour after regular classes end, once a week) and it was great.
We learned how to solder stuff on circuit boards (yes, soldering irons, yes some kids burned themselves, big whoop), how to use glue guns (again, I burned myself a bit, nothing serious) to put components together when assembling basic machines.
Can you even imagine the kind of amazing physical computing kids could be doing with Arduino and Raspberry Pi these days. HTML & CSS seem like a no brainer. I learned those in a "Technology" (in regular class hours) during my last year of middle school (again, in Paris).
If it weren't for a sympathetic instructor who told us to do make a website using FrontPage on anything we were passionate about (RTS for me at the time) I'm not sure I'd be a web developer today. I think these kinds of a programs are a great first steps to get kids excited about the web and/or basic languages before middle school and high school classes (in our out of class schedule) provide more thorough or complex introductions to programming proper.
Re: Learning “computer code” will be offered in French primary schools
#39In Italy I had the first programming introduction at 11, using Commodore 64 and the language used for teaching was Logo. Logo had to be loaded from 5" floppy disks. Commodore 64 were already obsolete by the time, in fact at 12 (the next year), we switched to Windows, and we used something to do hypertexts instead. Needless to say, Logo was much more instructive to whatever bullshit we were using the next year (in fac…
>I got several 0 marks (which got my math grades from 10/10 down _under_ the sufficiency and required me to _repeat_ the year) for arguing with the teacher about the limits of the machine words (I went with a print-out of a ~10 pages bignum library I wrote just to disprove her). I actually got suspended for asking the school director if I could be an assistant during these classes. I only have shitty memories about t…
Too bad you don't really realize that when you're at that age. I think that was implied.
Re: Learning “computer code” will be offered in French primary schools
#40In Italy I had the first programming introduction at 11, using Commodore 64 and the language used for teaching was Logo. Logo had to be loaded from 5" floppy disks. Commodore 64 were already obsolete by the time, in fact at 12 (the next year), we switched to Windows, and we used something to do hypertexts instead. Needless to say, Logo was much more instructive to whatever bullshit we were using the next year (in fac…
I totally get your point, when your passionate about something, as a student you need someone really good to teach you. And thus the issue when non passionate teachers ends up teaching something because they have to and not because they like it. In the end I believe the point of CS lectures at such a young age is not to actually teach people programming but more let them know that this field exist, how it basically w…
My main point here is that recycling a math teacher will not actually teach anything about CS, it will just add a "practical session" where you just write the same math concept with some boring language around it.
When I was a kid, for some people the advantage was that they actually got to turn on a computer and type on a keyboard for the first time in their life.
But nowdays, you don't really need to do that. Not in France at least.