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We should teach all our kids to code

kernelmag.com

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Re: We should teach all our kids to code

#3

Post by bwarp »

apexauk wrote: post #2

This is an issue I'm very passionate about, and I'm sure many others are too. I'd love to hear other's thoughts on how we educate the next generation and the best way to teach coding in 2012.

I wouldn't bother. Why?

It takes a certain mindset to write code. Not everyone has it or is interested in it. My children couldn't care less about it and that's up to them. They'd rather be digging holes in the garden and covering things in paint. I'm not here to indoctrinate them with my own interests but to nurture their interests.

Education is fundamentally flawed on the basis that it mandates knowledge on political whim and percieved societal need rather than nurturing and developing interest. Consequentially society is filled with people doing what they are bad at and hate.

Re: We should teach all our kids to code

#4

Post by 4ad »

bwarp wrote: post #3
apexauk wrote: post #2

This is an issue I'm very passionate about, and I'm sure many others are too. I'd love to hear other's thoughts on how we educate the next generation and the best way to teach coding in 2012.

I wouldn't bother. Why? It takes a certain mindset to write code. Not everyone has it or is interested in it. My children couldn't care less about it and that's up to them. They'd rather be digging holes in the garden and covering things in paint. I'm not here to indoctrinate them with my own interests but to nurture their interests. Education is fundamentally flawed on the basis that it mandates knowledge on politic…

Indoctrination? What?

It takes a certain talent to write or play music, or paint, or do science. We encourage kids to try all these things, most won't pursuit them, some will. The kids choose without coercion.

How many parents encourage kids to learn how to code compared to the number of parents that encourage their children to do the above mentioned things? It is the children who decide what they want to do, it's about offering them a broader spectrum of things to choose from.

Re: We should teach all our kids to code

#5

Post by mechanical_fish »

bwarp wrote: post #3
apexauk wrote: post #2

This is an issue I'm very passionate about, and I'm sure many others are too. I'd love to hear other's thoughts on how we educate the next generation and the best way to teach coding in 2012.

I wouldn't bother. Why? It takes a certain mindset to write code. Not everyone has it or is interested in it. My children couldn't care less about it and that's up to them. They'd rather be digging holes in the garden and covering things in paint. I'm not here to indoctrinate them with my own interests but to nurture their interests. Education is fundamentally flawed on the basis that it mandates knowledge on politic…

I don't farm or paint on a professional basis. I don't even do so as a hobby; although I constantly threaten to take up gardening, it seems to be one of those hobbies that hasn't stuck yet.

And yet I'm glad that, when I was a kid, people encouraged me to plant things and paint things.

Just because learning to code is societally approved doesn't mean that kids shouldn't be encouraged to practice it for fun. Trust me, if the kids decide they hate it they'll figure out how to avoid it as much as they can in the future. They're good at that.

Mind you, your attitude that you shouldn't expect your kids to take after you is a healthy one, and I don't want to discourage it. But don't take it too far. It's good that people are trying to figure out better ways to teach kids about programming.

Re: We should teach all our kids to code

#8

Post by cabacon »

I recently watched Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" (http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/) where he promoted Alice (http://www.alice.org/) as a tool for teaching kids to code. I downloaded it and played with it, and it looked pretty good. Like logo, it makes programming more fun by giving you immediate visual feedback. Like the "If this, then that" thing the article liked, it promotes the idea that programming is a lot like storytelling; the entities do what you say they do, nothing more, nothing less.

I found in it the potential for excitement that I found when I recently looked at the demo programmer live coding at http://iquilezles.org/live/index.htm

The live OpenGL editor he uses for immediate feedback made me figure out how to get an OpenGL triangle rendered on my laptop right quick. I can imagine that having storytelling control over 3d characters could do the same for kids.

Re: We should teach all our kids to code

#9

Post by chillyconker »

Just a couple of observations from a (mostly) computer-illiterate person:

The people who learnt to program computers in the 70s and 80s weren't taught at school by teachers, they taught themselves (maybe with help from friends).

The OSes of the 1980s were much simpler than MacOS/Linux/Windows. In particular most of them had a standard BASIC built in which was very easy to start using. One could just turn the computer on and immediately type in a program.

Re: We should teach all our kids to code

#10

Post by miahi »

bwarp wrote: post #3
apexauk wrote: post #2

This is an issue I'm very passionate about, and I'm sure many others are too. I'd love to hear other's thoughts on how we educate the next generation and the best way to teach coding in 2012.

I wouldn't bother. Why? It takes a certain mindset to write code. Not everyone has it or is interested in it. My children couldn't care less about it and that's up to them. They'd rather be digging holes in the garden and covering things in paint. I'm not here to indoctrinate them with my own interests but to nurture their interests. Education is fundamentally flawed on the basis that it mandates knowledge on politic…

We had programming classes in high school in Romania, teaching Pascal or C. They don't really work. Some students don't understand programming. Others don't care. Only 20% of a class can actually program very simple programs by themselves. Only one or two can really understand what is going on. And sometimes they just want to do something else.
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