
Lessons Learned: Please teach kids programming, Mr. President - babyshake
http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/02/teach-kids-programming-mr-president.html
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TomOfTTB
First, Barack Obama is not Santa Clause. I'm really indifferent towards the
man at this point (don't really like him, liked McCain even less) but the one
thing that really bothers me is this idea that we should just all sit down and
let President Obama do everything for us.

If the author here really cares about what he's saying he should write a
lesson plan that teaches programming and send it to schools. Put up a website
that asks for support of his lesson plan. Solicit donations for computers in
classrooms. Overall just get off his own @$$ and try to make it happen.

Finally, I don't see what DRM and banning Cell Phones has anything to do with
teaching technology to kids but I can say his first point is largely wrong. I
grew up in public funded housing (aka the projects) and even we had computers
in our classrooms. If someone can find me the high school that is completely
without computers in the U.S. I'd like to see it becasue I think it's just a
myth.

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bmj
The cell phone point is particularly out of place. How many kids are taking
class notes on their cell phones?

I'll take your suggestion a bit further--I think, instead of looking to the
government to implement these changes, why not provide an opportunity for
bright kids to opt out of the current system? Enable cooperatives and networks
to provide the kids with environments that will them flourish.

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jamii
> How many kids are taking class notes on their cell phones?

I've started taking lecture notes on my android phone. Its surprising how
having an open phone and a decent keyboard makes you rethink the amount of
computing power you carry around in your pocket.

I recently went to a seminar on pervasive computing where one of the speakers
demonstrated that audience members could learn to type accurately on a
chording keyboard _without looking at the screen_. I was going at 25-30wpm
already by the end of the lecture. A cheap bluetooth version would make subtle
notetaking really easy.

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lazyant
Don't teach kids programming; teach them science, math, languages, geography,
music etc.

Most people are doing fine and use the computers without knowing how to
program and I drive a car and don't know how to build or repair one. To
prepare kids for technology teach them science, logic and math.

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patio11
I largely agree, but I've always had this little bit of me that says "Most
people do not need to know most sciences".

I mean, we don't teach circuit design to everybody, on the sensible principle
that most people will never design a circuit. But we teach the anatomy of
worms to everybody because... most people will eventually have a pressing need
to dissect a worm? I mean, I'm not the world's most accomplished programmer by
any stretch of the imagination, but I very rarely get asked by the bosses
"Hey, Patrick, after you get done with that Javascript, could you please pull
the heart out of the worm on my desk?"

I was also forced as a child to learn about some rocks floating around in the
general vicinity of the sun. I still don't know why these rocks matter -- my
best guess is that pre-modern civilizations thought they were gods, poets
picked up on it, and people now consider the notion of travel to them sort of
romantic. I'm at a loss as to how learning about rocks prepares one for
programming, unless one aims to be one of the few hundred programmers engaged
in writing software to control missions to space aimed at getting ever-more-
detailed photos of the rocks "for scientific purposes".

Ditto lab chemistry. Titration is a) technician work -- its a repetitive
process with about as much intellectual content as swapping hard drives which
b) will be performed by perhaps half of a percent of the population in their
lives, if that. Yet we make everyone do it. It makes about as much sense as
making woodcarving mandatory for everyone... because you never know, right?

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ori_b
Because I'm certain that you wanted to be a programmer from the moment that
you entered high school, and it never benefitted you to have even a vague idea
of what other people do for a living?

Let alone intellectual curiosity.

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Kototama
_We are nerds, after all. Here's the most striking thing about the statistics
of this post: the average "age when started programming" is 13. Think of how
many 10-year-olds there must be in the data to balance out the occasional
person who started mid-career._

No because the sample is biased. People who read stackoverflow are nerds and
more incline to have begin programming early and mid-career starters are more
incline to not read it.

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known
Why not teach Programming + Politics

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chiffonade
Programmers tend to teach themselves. I wouldn't worry about it, Mr.
President.

