UK government response to my letter about programming in schools

What do you think of the Computing Higher we have north of the border?

http://www.sqa.org.uk/pastpapers/papers/papers/2011/H_Comput...

I had a look at it when this topic last came up and I was quite impressed - Prolog in schools!

Dear John, Whoosh! Not my problem. Love, the Government.

I totally agree with John's letter. When I was in primary school we had access to a BBC Micro with a Logo turtle which we could program ourselves. In senior school we had a BBC Master with the Domesday project, which was amazing at the time with decent resolution photos! The school was also lucky enough to have a ring network of BBC Micros with a shared Winchester Hard Drive. Later, we got access to Acorn Archimedes computers.

The thing that all these BBC/Acorn computers had in common was immediate access to a BASIC interpreter, and with the Archimedes, inline assembler. We had a great teacher who taught us how to use binary in bitwise operations. We were encouraged to write a program for GCSE computer studies and I wrote a library catalogue database without a backend database! A friend wrote a graphical calculator that he then went on to sell commercially. There was a regular Computer Club every Wednesday after school where you could do whatever you wanted - play games, write code, use *SHEET to do some maths...

All these things propelled me, later in life, to become a software developer and I'm glad I was given the skills necessary from school. Today, it's all about trying to get spyware infested computers to print from Microsoft Word in less than half an hour. A low-level hardware platform that is instantly programmable is a noble aim and I salute the Raspberry Pi chaps and hope you succeed!

Is an email to Michael Gove really the best way to get his attention?

This is a classic fob off email by a gatekeeper underling who has no idea who you are.

While I'm aware this may get downvoted to the depths, I feel I have to say it.

Why should kids be taught programming instead of reading, writing, language and maths?

If the curriculum was changed to include programming, it would almost certainly reduce the funding and time put into other, more important subjects. While a good understanding of computers will help with almost any job in the future, unless you're going into computing as a career, learning specifically programming will be absolutely no help. Programming has many benefits, but seeing as there are going to be cuts to educational funding, increases in class sizes etc. adding an extra topic that will only be useful to a small number of people would be wasteful. I agree that 'IT' taught in schools needs to take a step back and look at the bigger picture, rather than saying "this is how to use Powerpoint", it should be teaching kids how to find things out for themselves. But that is the same with nearly every other subject.

If you took a random person you passed on a busy London street at lunch time, how much better do you think they would be able to do their job if they knew how to program? I'd guess that for the majority of people it would make little to no difference. If someone wants to learn to program they can take it upon themselves to learn, like if someone wants to learn how to cook, or ride a bike, or play piano.

Am I looking at this the wrong way? Is there something I've missed?

Post; All the above being taken into account, their response was not acceptable. I'm sure they have to put up with a lot of nuts but that was a well thought out, well written email that made some valid points.