
Kids to learn how to code before high school in New Zealand - keithnz
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/333999/kids-to-learn-how-to-code-before-high-school
======
ggambetta
This is a fantastic move. In this day and age we should treat _" everyone
needs to know how to to program"_ just like _" everyone needs to know how to
read, write, and do basic maths"._

Does everyone need to write code for a living? No, just like we don't expect
everyone to be a professional writer or mathematician. But software is so
pervasive that within a generation or two, not understanding how it works will
put you at a severe disadvantage.

~~~
sametmax
This is nice in theory, but I would like kids to be able to actually read,
write and do basic maths correctly today instead of trying to add things.

Cause last time I checked a crazy numbers of them lack basic skills after they
got out of high-scool. That's is a terrible and grave problem we should try to
solve in an emergency before doing anything else fancy.

Stuff that anybody should be able to do WAY before being able to code:

\- make the summary of a text

\- calculate % of something

\- understand correlation is different from causality

\- read graphs and maps

\- follow instructions in a book to do a simple task

\- write a letter explaining directions in a clear way

\- being able to demonstrate causality on a simple system they just witness
working without using an example in their demonstration

\- calculate the cost of buying a car or having a baby when given the proper
metrics and projecting on that

Those are stuff our system is supposed to succeed in teaching at a very young
age and many adults don't even have such basic skills.

We have a problem here.

~~~
zanny
You can break reading, writing, math, and code all down to the simple act of
logical reasoning.

Reading is a man made system of information conveyance. To master reading, you
master the rules of it, while understanding the intent and purpose. Writing is
the same - a man made system of information conveyance, except for creation
rather than consumption. It has rules, and you need to understand intent and
purpose to master it.

Math is the patternized structural implementation system of the universe.
Again, to master math, you learn the rules, and understand the intent and
purpose.

Code is a man made system of information conveyance meant to implement math
for practical applications. You need to learn the rules and understand the
intent.

All of your examples just demonstrate that fundamentally, education _starts_
and _ends_ with the ability of someone to understand a system - to interpret
it rules, understand its intent, and use that knowledge for purpose to apply
the rules with intent.

That fundamental abstraction is horrifying, because it becomes so obvious that
these stills are _never_ acquired. I'd postulate a _majority_ of public school
graduates in the US cannot use structured logic to adopt new ideas and
structural systems in a consistent way, which belays the fundamentals of what
education is meant to accomplish.

More punctual orators call this "learning to learn". It is a lacking subject
in almost all educations, something you are meant to hopefully acquire on your
own, but the absence of which is worse than any other failure of development.
Living without critical thinking is akin to a failure to thrive.

~~~
sametmax
You can't teach somebody to learn in a generic manner. However, you can teach
even several subjects that will be useful everday that approach a range of
ways to learn, building the foundation required for the person to "learn to
learn" by him or herself.

This is what we are supposed to do.

This is not, however, what we do in school.

School is now doing :

\- baby sitting

\- killing creativity and autonomy

\- blending all kids into on uniform bowl

\- giving them examples on how to avoid admiting your are wrong, using fear,
cheating, power abuse, bad food, fact distorsion, memorizing and forgetting...

\- ranking kids against each others according to arbitrary yet not objective
metrics

\- teaching kids to pass, and fit a disfonctional system, at all cost, or be
ashamed

I have been a student to 11 schools due to my father moving a lot for his
work, from the worst in the hood to the best private ones. None of them
prepared me for my life. Most of the kids that went in there came out without
required basic skills, and yet passed. The most expensive ones are the less
evil, so money is an issue.

~~~
cat199
> You can't teach somebody to learn in a generic manner.

Nonsense.

However, the fact that this is often considered a valid view shows how little
philosophy/ethics are part of common education..

Once someone realizes it is their _duty_ to learn, and that learning is a
virtue that is rewarding on its own and brings benefit to themselves and
others, the 'skill' is rapidly acquired.

------
foopod
I was lucky enough to attend the NZTech Education Summit on the 26th and 27th
of June.

And can speak to even cooler changes happening in NZ classrooms. In Campbell's
Bay school they are running their classrooms similar to how scrum teams work.
Teachers act as facilitators and the learning is student led. At the start of
the week students get to choose their learning outcomes from things that must
be done this week and optional subject areas. And the week plays out like a
sprint where students plan it out, some like to do the most difficult things
first others unwind on a Monday with group activities with friends. There a 4
classes that all share the same space for this, which is broken in a quiet
zone, a collaborative zone, the makerspace and a few smaller glass rooms
dotted around. Once kids are happy they have completed a learning outcome they
just supply their learning evidence to their teacher and it gets ticked off
(BAT).

I also got to here about Kauri Flats primary school that uses design thinking
and works with local communities on projects as part of their learning.

These big changes are limited to primary school levels for now largely because
of the regulatory assessments put in place at a secondary level. But after
hearing from representatives of the ministry of education and the NZ
Qualifications Authority, there is definitely room for change in the coming
years.

Super cool stuff. And a big step towards the kind of skills needed to succeed
in today's society.

------
jkroso
Great this should put people off the subject for life and help keep the
software developer shortage going.

~~~
vonmoltke
The only thing that will fix the "software developer shortage" is for
companies to stop being unrealistic and fickle in their demands.

------
Lerc
The goal is admirable, but It looks to me that the government has just gone
"Make it So".

This is quite a relevant issue for me because I have taught computer
programming to primary school students in New Zealand. Teachers need to not
only be taught how to program themselves but also how people learn
programming. Which concepts are contingent on the understanding of other
concepts.

Every programming teacher (myself included) that I have encountered is just
someone who knows how to program muddling though best that they can.

I attended a seminar on how numeracy is taught in NZ. They have a lot of
information about the order and time it takes for individual concepts to be
grasped. Information from similar research on how children learn to program
needs to be coalesced into a teaching plan, and teachers need to be taught
that plan.

Doing this right will be a tough job. It will require resources. Probably more
resources than will be provided.

~~~
devoply
Though your intent is admirable, programming is something that can be very
easily thought, and yet quite difficult to master depending on your aptitude
and inclinations and personal commitment to learn. Should everyone be able to
write a simple script sure, and the tools that are being developed for
corporations are exactly to allow scripters to do more with simpler tools,
more drag and drop stuff with a simple scripting language. But real
programming is something that comes from your own efforts and endeavors. Not
something in my opinion that can be taught, even by talented teachers who are
programmers because the amount of time and dedication does not fit into an
hour or two a day, it fits into countless hours spent trying to hone your
skills out of your own personal interest and hours and hours of frustration
due to it. For a self-motivated programmer all you need is on YouTube and the
net. For everyone else some basic teaching is adequate to get people started
down the path, the rest they can learn by trying to do.

~~~
watwut
0.) Teacher who gives up on trying to figure out how to teach more effectively
won't be good.

1.) This is abut children. Their brains are not developped yet and their
motivation is flicky. Pedagogy matters a lot.

The whole point is to teach them basic concepts so that they become able to
learn more by themselves later on. They won't be taught modern stack, the
point is to make them able to learn real stuff later on. A kid that encounters
for cycle first time at university has much much harder time then the one that
was even causually playing with logo.

2.) Even adults have common sumbling blocks. Having access to other people's
experience - which explanation worked and in what order makes learning more
effective.

~~~
josephg
> 1.) This is abut children. Their brains are not developped yet and their
> motivation is flicky. Pedagogy matters a lot.

Pedagogy matters for adults too. The best kind of pedagogy is pedagogical
content knowledge. That is, how do you plan a lesson around the specific
content you're teaching? For example, what metaphors are effective for a given
topic? What are the common stumbling blocks? What classroom exercises and
demos are the best?

I've taught first year programming for a few years to collage age students. I
don't have data, but I'd guess the difference between an effective lesson and
an ineffective lesson is somewhere around 3-4x. That is, if I teach a concept
(eg, pointers) ineffectively it seems to take about 3-4 times as long for a
median student to 'get it' compared to if I teach it well.

Out of a classroom of about 25 people, there will be about 5 students who are
going to become great programmers no matter what I do. And about 5 students
who I am convinced will never learn to program, or if they do it'll take them
about 2-3x as long as everyone else to master the skill. The knowledge that
the remaining 15 students walk out of my classroom with is dependant on my
skill teaching programming. Practically speaking most of those students
actually learn a patchwork of the things I happened to teach effectively plus
whatever they learned on their own while doing assignments.

I hope its enough.

~~~
watwut
I agree. But I still think it is all more sensitive in children. They have
less self control and it is easier to discourage them. As adult, I was more
able to distinguish between "the topic is uninteresting" and "the class was
badly taught".

Then again, children can learn by themselves when it is all framed as game
they are freely exploring - adults learn much less that way.

Then there is a factor of developing brain - your students all have already
brains fully developped. So it won't happen that someone does not possess
abstract thinking yet, but still may suddenly click 6 month later on.

Basically, adults are more able to overcome obstacles and be independent in
learning while children depend on teacher much more - both for motivation and
actual content.

------
meri_dian
Learning or understanding code really isn't useful for most people in a strict
sense; with the proliferation of quality software applications there's really
no need to code for most people since the application they'd end up making to
fulfill one of their needs probably already exists.

You need to be able to communicate and express yourself to exist in society
and be useful in an organization, but in order to build anything useful with
code it usually takes a huge commitment of time and effort, so application
developers specialized in writing code are better suited to making things with
code than the average person.

A great example is this: yes I could develop my own music streaming service,
but I could also just use Spotify.

That being said, we should still make sure people understand how technology
works at a high level just because it's so important for modern society. One
of the goals of education should be to help people understand the world in
which they're born. And analytical skills are important so in the sense that
learning to code can develop these skills, it can also be helpful for the
average person.

~~~
disordinary
Spotify is an extreme example, people need to write macros for applications,
even understanding the formula syntax of Excell needs an understanding of
programing.

------
te_chris
Given the amount of "How did you get out of this cursed industry" threads on
here, if initiatives like this open up a pathway from coding to teaching I
wouldn't be surprised if that was actually a pretty popular avenue for people
sick of the day to day coding jobs. Likely a lot more satisfying than
technical management.

------
jancsika
This is backwards.

There should be regular class periods where the students must work together
and figure out some way to teach the technologically illiterate adult in the
room.

Each project could start with the technologically illiterate adult crying and
venting about their mortal fear of being replaced by a robot. In one project,
the adult would let it slip that they get insecure when the students just go
on their own to Wikipedia to find out information. The students must then put
together a workshop with lesson plans and demos that teaches the illiterate
adult how to apply their esoteric knowledge of the late 18th century textile
industry to the relevant Wikipedia articles.

Repeat as necessary. By the time the kids graduate, the teachers should have a
decent grounding in digital technology.

------
ntoll
Great stuff! Speaking from the UK (where this was mandated back in 2010), it's
all very well having a curriculum, but what if none of the teachers have the
skills needed to deliver effective and inspiring learning?

In the UK the government said, "make it so" and failed to provide training or
resources for the many computing teachers who don't know how to program (which
is most of them since the vast majority of UK based computing teachers come
from non-computing subjects like business studies).The difference in quality
of teaching, expectation of attainment and learning resources is staggering.

I wish NZ well, but I hope they realize that the teachers are fundamental in
making this a success. A lack of investment in teacher training or classroom
resources will make this dead in the water.

~~~
davidgerard
Scratch works pretty well in practice, to get across to kids that computers
aren't magic:

[https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/127964136013/it-turns-
ou...](https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/127964136013/it-turns-out-scratch-
is-probably-the-answer)

[https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/137374628373/scratch-
is-...](https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/137374628373/scratch-is-probably-
still-the-answer)

[https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/137376311558/scratch-
is-...](https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/137376311558/scratch-is-probably-
still-the-answer)

That's in the UK. The maths teacher was pretty on the ball here, but the main
thing is it caught the kids' interest and communicated _the concept of
programmability_.

Scratch for young children, Python later and you've basically got this coding
thing introduced.

------
boznz
My daughter did some "Coding" a few years ago in NZ as part of her ICT, I
looked over her work when she was getting frustrated and to tell the truth it
was just end-to-end acronyms and jargon and the program they had to write in
java script was soul destroying.

If I had to have done this at such an early age I would never actively avoided
learning electronics or programming. The rest of the ICT course was basically
learning Microsoft office and outlook.

She's taking HR at university so should have a job (sacking people) come the
robot/AI revolution :-)

------
j7ake
What percentage of teachers know computer science? Who will teach the kids?

I am afraid this will end up a disaster because the teachers themselves do not
know how computer science.

this could end up in a situation analogous to Lockharts lament

~~~
tuukkah
The teacher needs to tell the kids to open
[https://hourofcode.com/](https://hourofcode.com/)

------
icedchai
In the 80's, kids in various enrichment (AKA "gifted") programs learned how to
code back in _elementary school_! I remember learning Basic on Apple II's and
TRS-80's.

------
konart
We've been learning to code as kids (12-14 years old) too (things like Logo
and Basic). (Russia here). Is this something new or unusual?

~~~
mkl
I was taught logo in NZ at 11, and started teaching myself Basic around the
same time. High school students can learn programming as part of optional
computing classes starting at age 13. Actually, age 11-12 students can
probably choose to do it at some schools.

The difference here is the age, and that it would be compulsory for
_everyone_.

~~~
konart
>would be compulsory

Well, in Russia there is no alternative. Everything, including Informatics\CS
is compulsory for everyone :)

Now I'd like to the process nowadays. Because in 90s most kids didn't have a
PC at home (I'm pretty sure my class had two kids with a PC including myself),
so from the 3rd year we were taught how to use it at all and some games (you
know that maze with a mole moving boxes to get out or something like that).
Then Logo, Basic and even Internet at some point. But what now? Most kids use
iPad better then their parents by the age of 7...

~~~
gnat
At what age is Informatics\CS first compulsory, and when does it stop being
compulsory? Are there specialist teachers or is the maths/music/English
teacher being pressed into service to teach computing too? Sorry for all the
questions, but I'm keen to know how the compulsory education in CS works!

~~~
konart
>At what age is Informatics\CS first compulsory

2-4 grades - elective (in some schools) 5-end of school as compulsory for all
schools.

>when does it stop being compulsory

It doesn't. Here in Russia we don't have a system where you can chose your
subjects, even in high school (university[1] etc). Instead there is an
educational programm to follow. Plus some schools provide elective subjects
which you can add to you programm (for example second foreign language).

>Are there specialist teachers

Yep, there are. Specialized schools (we have general schools and schools with
specializations, for example with deeper math&physics, or biology, or
languages) might have several CS teachers (for example one who teachers
younger kids simple things and general programming and the other one with
algorithmic\math\network bias).

[1] Obviously in university the programm will differ depending on department
you are in and other small things.

------
s_dev
Similar discussion on /r/DevelEire about introducing coding to Irish primary
schools.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/DevelEire/comments/6jsee6/teachers_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DevelEire/comments/6jsee6/teachers_say_plans_to_teach_children_coding_not/)

------
sedachv
You cannot mention efforts to teach programming to school-age children without
talking about the work of Seymour Papert:

[https://www.media.mit.edu/events/papert/](https://www.media.mit.edu/events/papert/)

A few comments have already mentioned Logo, which came out of Papert's work.

------
muninn_
This isn't good, but it can't stop here. It has to be continually taught over
the child's educational life and implemented and shown how it is useful in
other courses. Otherwise it's "just some thing I learned in high school" and
the applications of it won't seem relevant.

------
tjpnz
Won't count for much unless they give related subjects some attention. The way
maths is taught in NZ is archaic.

~~~
mkl
Can you give some examples of how the maths teaching is archaic?

I teach undergraduate maths in NZ, so I'd love to hear your thoughts. I think
the current approach is working, but could definitely be improved.

~~~
tjpnz
Sure but let me first say my beef is mainly with how it's taught in secondary
schools (had no issues at tertiary level - CS major here). I should also note
that this was my experience during the early 2000s and I really hope things
have changed at least a little.

Our maths classes basically consisted of being handed really old textbooks and
then being left to our own devices. The teachers when they did interact with
us had no passion for the subject. I recall when someone asked why we were
learning quadratic equations the teacher basically told the class he had no
clue. I almost left high school with a deep loathing of the subject, and I say
almost because I had one teacher in year 12 who was passionate about the
subject and taught it well. I would later learn that his background was in a
field related to mathematics (electrical engineering), not teaching which was
my impression of all the others.

I guess my main point here is that the New Zealand government could be
investing in it's education system by hiring people who have a real world
background in the subject matter they're teaching. Having that knowledge and
passion for a subject made all the difference - at least for me.

~~~
mkl
Wow, that's really different from my high school experience in the late 90s.
Sounds like it very much depends on the teachers (which is unsurprising). I
agree there needs to be much more incentive for people with real world
experience to go into teaching. Difficult problem though.

I think tertiary lecturers are generally much more passionate.

