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Kids can't use computers, and why it should worry you

coding2learn.org

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Re: Kids can't use computers, and why it should worry you

#431

Post by superuser2 »

angersock wrote: post #86

So, here's some different themes in the thread so far, some ideas spawned from the article, and thoughts on them: Author is a jerk for the TLDR at the beginning Sure--it's unfortunate that such a red herring was thrown into an otherwise excellent article. Normal people shouldn't have to learn how to into computer. This is unreasonable. "People don't want to learn how to computer, they want to learn how to get X done"…

>It's about a way of thinking, about a way of abstracting problems and creating generalized solutions, about recognizing patterns in a system and applying just enough force to overcome your issue in an elegant fashion. This mindset is important to cultivate, and carries over to solving other problems and enriching your life.

Sorry if it's off-topic, but what you're talking about here is exactly the skill I feel I was forced to develop in AP Chemistry in high school. I wish that course got some more recognition. It really isn't about chemistry; it's about problem solving.

Conjecturing models and then testing their implications to see if they fit or not. Constant iteration on our understanding of the atom based on experimental data. Logical, quantitative ways to reason from a set of observations to "name the mystery element."

People associate critical thinking with math, but at the high school level, I learned the most I've ever learned about how to think in AP Chem. Math was about following procedures - in Chem, especially the "marathon problems," you had to create the recipes for yourself by stringing together primitives in a logical way.

I'm biased by my own performance, but I'd like to see SAT Math replaced with AP Chem.

Re: Kids can't use computers, and why it should worry you

#432

Post by emhs »

tenpoundhammer wrote: post #118

"I want the people who will help shape our society in the future to understand the technology that will help shape out society in the future." The people who shape our society will know what they need to know. I'm not sure a great understanding of a desktop PC is going to change this. On a separate note, the author is demanding that everyone be super knowledgeable about a set of devices that is on it's way out. I thi…

> The people who shape our society will know what they need to know. I'm not sure a great understanding of a desktop PC is going to change this.

If you define "what they need to know" as "what's necessary for vaguely close to optimal job performance", then no, they won't. They will know the minimum they can get away with. They will know as little as we let them know. It has always been this way. The USA was founded by some of the brightest men of its day because the prevailing view demanded that this be so. Today, we do not demand that our leaders be our best and brightest. We have no idea how we would go about measuring such a thing. Instead, we've been taught to support the candidate that fits our preset ideological subset. This leads to parrot leaders who do not think strategically about the management of a country as much as they think strategically about the appeasement of their sources of votes and campaign contributions.

It comes back to understanding the basics of asking good questions and thinking about one's surroundings. This process is what humans did well to succeed: we should be encouraging it as much as possible. I do not ask that the average person, or even our decision-makers, already know how to re-install an operating system. I ask that they know how to find out, and think about the problem well enough to gather information and come to a conclusion about what's wrong. I ask that they look at the world rationally and scientifically. This is the failure of our educational system. Because we have not taught basic thinking and reasoning skills, because we have not taught that this is fundamentally necessary as a basic part of being a human, our leaders will say things like "The internet is a system of tubes". Because we do not expect or teach our citizens to think rationally, because we do not expect and verify that our leaders are informed about the mechanics and consequences of the decisions they make, bad laws are passed with great frequency.

This is our cultural, educational, and societal failure. No, I don't expect everyone to know how to re-install Windows. I expect them to look around them and see if they have any resources to get closer to a solution before expecting a free fix. And if they decide it's not worth their time to do it on the regular, I expect them to conceptually understand it on a basic enough level to provide information when asked probing questions by the person they're paying to fix it. Think, then act. It's not hard, we just gave up on teaching it.

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