Math is such a wonderful and useful invention. Making people learn mathematics at school has made everyone love mathematics, take it up professionally, and become skilled mathematicians... You see my point. Most people hate math because of their experiences with it in school. I see the same thing happening with coding. It's gonna turn more people away from it than it ever turns onto it. May even do more net damage than good. (Anecdote: in my intro programming class, many people did not like it, even though they self selected to do it.)
Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools
151–160 of 195 posts
Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools
#152I think personal finance would be far more valuable to students than programming.
Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools
#153In Japan, English is already mandatory, yet, English fluency sucks. Japan recognizes the problem, but doesn't know what to do about it. Basically, English education has yet to succeed. [1][2] This is the thing about Japan. They can make these moves that are incredibly progressive and ambitious -- visionary even, yet, they really have no idea how to go about doing it. As it stands, they don't have enough teachers that…
Ah yes, I used the math analogy, but the English analogy is also spot on.
Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools
#154Wow, in 20 years Japan will be producing some amazing technology. I think people underestimate how transformative an understanding of programmatic problem solving can be. I'd put it only slightly under literacy.
I disagree. Making people learn to code is the same as making people learn math. It turns people off it. Most people are not interested in it. We often see the world through our own lens. I know many people in my past programming class who simply did not want anything to do with it ever again, and they selected themselves to do it. In fact, that seems to be more common than the people who loved it.
Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools
#155Math is such a wonderful and useful invention. Making people learn mathematics at school has made everyone love mathematics, take it up professionally, and become skilled mathematicians... You see my point. Most people hate math because of their experiences with it in school. I see the same thing happening with coding. It's gonna turn more people away from it than it ever turns onto it. May even do more net damage th…
Learning to program is a very very different thing. You can use programming to learn math and play games and mix the two.
My son loves learning programming. He isn't learning it like you and i learned math. He is playing it. Adjusting it, slowly understanding the concepts of loops, if/then etc. conceptually, later literally.
So at least I don't se your point :)
Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools
#156In Japan, English is already mandatory, yet, English fluency sucks. Japan recognizes the problem, but doesn't know what to do about it. Basically, English education has yet to succeed. [1][2] This is the thing about Japan. They can make these moves that are incredibly progressive and ambitious -- visionary even, yet, they really have no idea how to go about doing it. As it stands, they don't have enough teachers that…
>From what I've witnessed from my school years, I guarantee you the smarter students will be correcting their teachers and making a mockery of them. As somebody who had programming classes (first Pascal and then Java) throughout all my highschool being taught by a Math teacher who never really programmed other than the basics and the textbook stuff... I can tell you that I'm still glad we had the chance. Since day on…
Agreed. I had a very similar experience with an AP Computer Science course in high school. Considering the material and range of students, I think my teacher did a fantastic job, though. I didn't feel like I picked up that much, but the exposure of being an enthusiastic peer who could help others -- that was very worthwhile.
Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just don't think most people will ever in their lives need to script their computers to batch rename files and automate tasks. Even if they do need it for something it seems more time efficient to find some GUI app to do it, or get help from someone who already know how to do it (a power user). I also think that even if this was taught from the beginning - it'd remain a power user thing. But I agree, I use automati…
>I just don't think most people will ever in their lives need to script their computers to batch rename files and automate tasks. Even if they do need it for something it seems more time efficient to find some GUI app to do it, or get help from someone who already know how to do it (a power user). I agree with you but you couldn't have chosen a worse example. Mass renaming, tagging or formatting of files is one of th…
I know it is common, but I think they would still use some GUI tool or get help from a friend.
I am very comfortable in the terminal but I'd still /prefer/ a GUI tool.
Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools
#158In Japan, English is already mandatory, yet, English fluency sucks. Japan recognizes the problem, but doesn't know what to do about it. Basically, English education has yet to succeed. [1][2] This is the thing about Japan. They can make these moves that are incredibly progressive and ambitious -- visionary even, yet, they really have no idea how to go about doing it. As it stands, they don't have enough teachers that…
>From what I've witnessed from my school years, I guarantee you the smarter students will be correcting their teachers and making a mockery of them. As somebody who had programming classes (first Pascal and then Java) throughout all my highschool being taught by a Math teacher who never really programmed other than the basics and the textbook stuff... I can tell you that I'm still glad we had the chance. Since day on…
Similar experience, except I did some mocking (just a little bit!); the course (Pascal, mostly) was not great, but I'd say it was useful, and students did learn something.
Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools
#159In Japan, English is already mandatory, yet, English fluency sucks. Japan recognizes the problem, but doesn't know what to do about it. Basically, English education has yet to succeed. [1][2] This is the thing about Japan. They can make these moves that are incredibly progressive and ambitious -- visionary even, yet, they really have no idea how to go about doing it. As it stands, they don't have enough teachers that…
"In Japan, English is already mandatory, yet, English fluency sucks."
Spoken fluency sucks. Reading and writing English is much better.
When I lived in Japan, and eventually achieved some basic fluency in speaking Japanese, communicating with my coworkers often consisted of English vocabulary, in sentences using Japanese pronunciation and grammar.
The reason for this is simple. They had plenty of access to English written material, and needed to read and understand it in order to do their job (computer science research).
But they had very little interaction with native English speakers on a day to day basis, so few opportunities to practice real time conversation. Which is the only way I know to actually become fluent speaking a second language.
Re: Japan adding mandatory programming education to all elementary schools
#160In Japan, English is already mandatory, yet, English fluency sucks. Japan recognizes the problem, but doesn't know what to do about it. Basically, English education has yet to succeed. [1][2] This is the thing about Japan. They can make these moves that are incredibly progressive and ambitious -- visionary even, yet, they really have no idea how to go about doing it. As it stands, they don't have enough teachers that…
>From what I've witnessed from my school years, I guarantee you the smarter students will be correcting their teachers and making a mockery of them. As somebody who had programming classes (first Pascal and then Java) throughout all my highschool being taught by a Math teacher who never really programmed other than the basics and the textbook stuff... I can tell you that I'm still glad we had the chance. Since day on…
When you are a "TA" - which you basically were, according to your description - then of course you learn a lot. I've been a TA myself, and that alone gives one a very big boost because you spend a lot of time researching and solving problems - and it's fun because you are motivated like hell.
However, that says nothing - nothing at all - about the experience of everybody else in the course.