
Forget coding, we need to teach our kids how to dream - guilhas
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/04/forget-coding-we-need-to-teach-our-kids-how-to-dream
======
jdietrich
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you want to
expand someone's sense of what is possible, teach them a practical skill.

I have no idea how to teach someone to dream. I can teach someone to look at a
piece of lumber and see a jewellery box or a bird table or a guitar. I can
teach someone to look at a pile of scrap electronics and see a headphone
amplifier or an egg timer or a robot. I can teach someone to look at a group
of bored people and see a theatre company or a choir or an expedition.

IMO, we're seeing a generation of young people who want to change the world,
but only know how to write essays and recite facts. There's a desperate lack
of _doing_ in the lives of our children - they have been taught by thousands
of hours of schooling and after-schooling to be obedient followers. They're
very good at being squeaky wheels, but they don't know how to make things
happen. Their lives are bereft of making and doing, of unstructured and
unsupervised play.

~~~
fny
Ah "kids these days"...[0]

I love to imagine what some older folk must've have said about "kids these
days" back in the 60s and 70s. Probably a pile of useless fornicating, high-
seeking hippies...

But I digress.

From my perspective, we're seeing this generation swoon over the dream of
being doers and entrepreneurs. Isn't the lifeblood of nearly every startup
young and hungry talent willing to work to "change the world" or make "the
next big thing"? Isn't the average age of YC founders in the mid 20s? Aren't
technology companies are often criticized for being agist?

I often wonder about adults these days...

[0]: [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-
psyched/when-...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/when-
i-was-your-age-or-what-is-it-with-kids-these-days/)

~~~
jdietrich
I don't think that kids these days are awful. I think they're great - they're
socially progressive, they're cultured, they have high aspirations and they
work really hard. I think that successive generations have let them down, due
to a culture of parenting that is dominated by fear.

I'm not a naysayer or a nostalgic pessimist. I think that there are clear
trends in society, some positive and some negative. It's obviously great news
that we no longer consider it acceptable to beat children or to smoke during
pregnancy. There is a clear trend in parenting and schooling towards more
structure, more pressure and far less independence. We have seen a huge
increase in educational attainment and college admission which is
overwhelmingly a good thing, but the greater focus on academic study has come
at the cost of other skills.

For every twentysomething who founds a startup, there are dozens of baristas
with liberal arts degrees. A lot of those baristas might dream of founding a
startup, but very few of them have the skills, experience and confidence to do
so. Research indicates that the average age of an entrepreneur is actually 40;
most successful businesses are founded by people with an established career
and a great deal of professional experience. High rates of youth unemployment
and underemployment are likely to have a significant impact on innovation in
ten or twenty years.

[http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2010/05/the-
anat...](http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2010/05/the-anatomy-of-
an-entrepreneur)

------
knappa
> I don’t need to know how to code or shoot in 360 degrees or big rights to
> music, but I do need to know the very best people who can.

We can't all be managers.

> We can’t begin to imagine a career in 2020, let alone 2030.

Come on. Those are 3 and 13 years away.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Yeah, I found that kind of hilarious. Doesn't this blog post falls into a
recency bias that's common with lots of things? The notion that we're in an
especially chaotic world must be pretty silly for any generation that grew up
under constant threat of disease, war, starvation, etc.

It talks about "fake news" needing to be fought, but then advocates against
factual knowledge to do so. The way you know something is fake is by having a
well of knowledge to draw from. It's not just rote memorization, it's putting
the pieces together, which you can't do if you just rely on Google for
everything.

------
rb808
This is a big problem with the college admissions process. For my children I'm
thinking of ignoring most of the stupid extra-curricular and extra AP class
suggestions and concentrating on curiosity, teamwork and creativity. Play,
travel, music, having fun with friends. They'll likely not get into Ivy league
colleges but will be better and more successful in the long term.

~~~
fny
I have a friend who works in admissions at a top 10. The stupid extra-
curricular and AP class suggestions is not what they target. Admissions
officers often see through this type of resume stuffing, and reluctantly use
these candidates to fill in space after they selected their top candidates.

Baseline requirements: near 1600 SAT and near 4.0 unweighted GPA taking the
hardest classes. To the school, this proves you'll be able to survive at a top
10. Again, this is a requirement for consideration not admission.

What gets you in: curiosity, creativity, and passion. The most compelling
candidates have a narrative and a drive that speaks through the application.
Say your kid loves botany, dance, travel, music, or engineering. Foster those
interests and enable them to achieve in what they love. An admission officer
would swoon over a kid with a passion for biology and husbandry over the
directionless one who took every AP science class in the books and joined
umpteen honor society.

~~~
rb808
> Baseline requirements: near 1600 SAT and near 4.0 unweighted GPA taking the
> hardest classes.

And there you have it. If you have to have perfect grades you can't experiment
or take any risks. A hardcore science student for whom math is easy could
never study a language, or work on something they're not as good at.

~~~
fny
> could never study a language, or work on something they're not as good at.

Foreign language and writing skills are a requirement. Assuming a school has
non-STEM class like history, its expected that they'll take those classes too.
Admissions doesn't penalize a student for getting a B in a "risk" class like
music theory. Remember its _near_ 4.0.

I also think you're missing the point.

In great part, schools deny a student for his own good. They feel that student
should go to a less demanding school so he can nurse his academic skills
instead of drinking from a firehose.

For most of the students top schools admit, 1600 and 4.0 unweighted isn't a
particularly difficult achievement.

~~~
jschwartzi
You don't get penalized for getting a single B on a single risk class, but
what about two? Three? Can you quantify the level of ambitious-ness the
admissions process actually allows you to have before you're no longer up for
consideration? What if you're well-rounded enough not to have spent 20 hours a
week studying Greek and Latin tenses for the SAT, so you only got a 1300?

"It's for your own good" is a pretty arrogant attitude. There are tons of
people who are capable of drinking from the firehose who don't excel in High
School. Why not just admit that your selectiveness is a form of risk-aversion
on your part, as in you'd rather not take a chance on a B-student.

~~~
csa
I get the sense that you and 'fny are talking past each other. You both have
some strong points, and you both have some weak points.

\- If a smart student has strong learning strategies, high school classes as a
general rule should not be difficult to get good grades in. There are
exceptions for demonstrably capricious teachers --these teachers should
definitely be avoided and are generally not difficult to identify except in
one's first year of high school (even then...). If a student struggles in a
class or in a certain discipline (e.g., math or foreign languages) in high
school, then I humbly suggest that they are either not that smart, have
significant gaps in their learning strategies, or have some sort of learning
block. IMHO, all of these things if they persist throughout high school are
potentially valid reasons to reject a person from an elite university since
they will cause much bigger problems later.

\- Contrary to what 'fny says, you can actually get quite a few Bs in high
school and still get accepted to an elite school. Ditto with an SAT score that
is not close to 1600. The catch is that the applicant needs to make up for it
elsewhere in the application. Really interesting candidates don't have problem
with this.

\- If you think studying Greek and Latin tenses for 20 hours a week is the key
to getting a high SAT verbal score, then I think you have been grossly misled.
For smart kids, just regularly reading and understanding "high brow" magazines
like The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Foreign Affairs, The Weekly
Standard, The New Yorker, etc. is more than enough to build a very healthy
SAT-ready vocabulary as well as high level reading comprehension skills. If
you mention the idea of Greek and Latin roots to smart kids, they will be able
to figure out what a lot of the core ones are based on their reading. Note
that this type of reading will also give them good schemata for higher level
writing.

\- The "it's for your own good" comment definitely seems arrogant, and it kind
of is. That said, it's kind of right, too. It's rough to see a smart kid
struggle at an elite school because they lack some fundamentals that a lot of
the entering class comes in with (e.g., study strategies, writing skills,
background knowledge, etc.). That said, the ones who can "drink from the
firehouse" despite mediocre grades are usually obvious to admissions
committees since they excel to a phenomenal level on some other vector (e.g.,
international science fair winner, amazing inventor, etc.).

\- You are half right with your comment on risk aversion and taking a risk on
a B-student. Without any other evidence that this hypothetical B-student will
fit in and/or excel, they are likely to be unhappy as well as be a minor or
negative contributor to their peer groups (i.e., they will have to be
"carried" in group work and/or they will set the team back by not being able
to do adequate work). One of the things that makes elite schools amazing (as
well as some honors programs at 2nd tier schools) is that you can learn a lot
from your peers.

\- Note that I think 'fny is largely talking about the standards for Caucasian
and Asian non-athlete non-diversity applicants from the NE corridor and the
west coast. There are a metric shit ton of B-students (and worse!) at elite
schools. They tend to be recruited athletes (esp. in football and basketball,
but in other sports as well), diversity candidates (note that this is not just
racial diversity, but also geographical diversity), z-listers, or people
coming in with a lot of social capital. There are also vastly different
standards for applicants at universities like Penn where they apply to a
school within the university. For example, the average profiles for Wharton
students and Nursing students are quite different, and this difference can
sometimes be magnified by other factors like geographical preference (e.g., a
nursing student from rural PA might have an application that would shock a few
HNers).

This is a pet topic of mine. If you have any more questions, I will be happy
to answer.

~~~
replicatorblog
I'm curious, what is your background? Have you worked in an admissions office?
Everything you say makes perfect sense, when screening resumes for hiring you
see a lot of ivy resumes that are good, but all sort of blend together. Then
you see someone from a strong school, but with some crazy side project and
it's an instant fit.

\+ What do you recommend as reading to parents? E.g. my daughter is blessed
with a great memory (e.g. memorized the periodic table at 3.5 years). I'm
aghast at how bad the world of parenting media is. Our goal is to set her on
the path to use her talents in interesting, fulfilling ways, not to turn her
into an automaton.

~~~
csa
My personal area of expertise is cognition and learning. One of the more
interesting projects I have worked on was trying to figure out why
demonstrably high-intelligence people underperform (often significantly) in
medium-term high-stakes tasks (short answer is lack of motivation, poor
strategies, and/or anxiety). I have also studied and done work on the
performance of high-IQ individuals, and college admissions was definitely a
sub-topic of this research and work.

As far as admissions matters, I have worked with and/or on admissions
committees for two Ivies at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. I have
never been an admissions officer myself (I am on a different career path), but
I am really glad the people who do those jobs seem to love it -- it can be a
surprisingly tough job.

A few comments:

\- RE similar/boring resumes from Ivy students -- The dirty little secret is
that only about 10-30% of Ivy grads actually stand out intellectually. The
rest are very meh -- smart and often hardworking, but definitely meh. This
doesn't change after they graduate. This may seem to conflict with other
comments that I made in this thread, but it actually doesn't. There are a ton
of Ivy students who are bringing other things to the table (e.g., recruited
athlete, social capital, diversity metrics, etc.), so getting good grades and
a good SAT score is enough to push them over the top. Said another way, they
may not be interesting intellectually, but they are interesting in other ways
that the school values.

\- RE strong school crazy side project -- These are the people I love. The
best part is that for the most part it doesn't really matter where they go to
school -- they will be winners in life. Seek these people out as often as
possible, and your life will be rich.

\- RE recommended reading 1 -- I am slightly embarrassed to say that I am not
up to date on recommended readings for parents since I basically "roll my own"
research-backed plans at this point. That said, I can tell you some of the
authors I have read who shaped my concepts of learning. I am a neo-Piagetian,
so my bias will show in the following list of academic authors: Jerome Bruner,
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Howard Gardner (be careful about derivative works by
others -- they sometimes bastardize his original work), Robert Sternberg, Lev
Vygotsky (usu. in summary... he wrote in Russian), David Perkins, Robert Kegan
(esp. In Over Our Heads), Kurt Fischer (esp. Human Behavior...), Eleanor
Duckworth, and Jean Piaget (seriously, just know the basic idea of stages of
child development -- his ideas have been significantly refined over the past
few decades). Just search Amazon for these authors, read the reviews, and pick
one that sounds interesting. Most of the books are accessible for non-
academics, but they are backed by solid research with accompanying solid
research publications. Given that I have just given you a list of accessible
graduate level readings...

\- RE recommended reading 2 -- For high school students and soon-to-be college
applicants, I have heard that Cal Newport's books are good. Note that I have
not read them myself, but the comments on Amazon and various blurbs seem to
show that he is on the right track. That said, I hope that he doesn't provide
a formula ("just do these 15 steps to get into your dream school"), because a
strict formula won't work since people and contexts can often be very
different. I would hope that the main takeaways are abstracted one level so
that they can be applied to a variety of contexts. Other than that, I don't
have much for you.

\- RE great memory -- I am curious about why your daughter memorized the
periodic table. Was she encouraged to? Did she do it naturally? Is she
normally encouraged to memorize things? Feats of memory often turn into a type
of parlor game that young children can use to get positive feedback from
adults, and it's an unfortunately easy crutch to lean on. If you are looking
for a non-automaton, I would try to steer clear of _heavily_ rewarding this
behavior if at all possible. Specifically, let them know that it was a good
job to memorize something, but that memorization needs to have a purpose. The
big rewards should come with the higher-order thinking accomplishment that the
memorization facilitated. That's just my opinion...

\- RE general parenting -- Kids are intellectual sponges -- they are naturally
born scientists, artists, and sociologists. The best thing you can do is
facilitate their exploration and model best practices for them. Help them push
their own intellectual boundaries in a relatively safe way (easy to say, hard
to do -- short hint is to bring them back with a small success once they have
hit cognitive break down). Model good processes for them -- for example,
likes-dislikes-questions-improvements review process, revising (or refactoring
code, or drafts for papers, or studies for art, or whatever similar concept
that top performers do for revisions and development), etc. Modeling good
empathy practices from a young age can reap huge dividends. I could go
on......

\- RE parenting media -- It's hard to do one-size-fits-all media on good
parenting. As I mentioned before, people and contexts can vary widely. Another
issue is that sometimes parents are bringing their own issues to the table, so
seemingly good parenting advice can sometimes go sideways when interpreted
through the parent(s) with issues. A top-notch parenting book would probably
start with "make sure you have addressed all of your own major issues" and
would lose a big chunk of their readership/market right there.

OK, wall of text achieved. I will stop here. Let me know if you have more
questions, and we can touch base via other means.

------
veddox
I must say I found this article very weak and way too full of stereotypes.

First, the myth of the "increasingly unpredictable world". It's common,
perhaps especially so in tech circles, but not particularly sound when seen in
the greater context of history. "A world more divided and polarised than ever"
is just rot. (And talking about history: "In recent years, we have considered
maths, reading, and writing as the basic building blocks for survival" \- has
this guy ever heard about the _septem_ _artes_ _liberales_? Even the Romans
had the "three Rs" in their education!)

Secondly: yes, we do still need to have factual knowledge - even in the age of
Google and Wikipedia. The Internet can furnish you with just about any piece
of information you desire, but information does not equate knowledge! Of
course, critical thinking is indeed just that - critical - but thinking
requires knowledge. Trying to think without a base of knowledge just isn't
possible. As for his statement "we’re living in a world where we outsource
knowledge and skills to the Internet": who put the information on the Internet
in the first place?

Thirdly, the importance of creativity. Yes, creativity is incredibly
important. But again, creativity without skill is dead. And what does skill
require? That's right, practice. Lot's of it. Before you can be truly
creative, you've got to be persistent. Before schools can profitably teach
creativity, they need to teach persistence and skills.

And last: relationships. Well, the fact that relationships are vital is a bit
of a no-brainer. They always have been. But when the author says "I don’t need
to know how to [do stuff] but I do need to know the very best people who can",
that's just rubbish. Because if everybody had that attitude, nobody would know
how to do anything at all! You don't need to be the best, and you don't need
to know how to do everything - but you sure as heck need to know how to do
something!

 _Mene,_ _mene,_ _tekel,_ _upharsin._

------
libeclipse
This "code written by code" meme is over-hyped. It'll be a long time yet
before software has any chance of developing a creative solution to a problem
better than its human counterparts.

~~~
fny
The "code written by code" meme is bogus. Code writes code today. That's the
point of every compiler, library, and SDK. We'll simply make higher-level
questions and statements than we once did, just like we're doing today.

~~~
kazinator
You and other commenters are all equivocating on multiple definitions of the
verb "write" ranging from "mechanically generate" to "invent or obtain
informally stated functional requirements, augment with a detailed design,
implement, test ..."

~~~
fny
Let me simplify my argument then.

When I say "Alexa, what's the weather today?" I'm coding.

For as long as there is some desire to command a machine and stringing those
commands together, there will be code.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> _When I say "Alexa, what's the weather today?" I'm coding._

Having worked (albeit briefly) on similar systems in the past, no, really, you
aren't.

------
salesguy222
Dreaming doesn't pay the bills.

I can't dream about performing surgery on someone. If someone had taught me
everything I needed to know to be a decent surgeon, and then introduced me to
some important people hiring surgeons, and told me to go "dream"...

then I would be a surgeon.

If they told me to dream first, I probably wouldn't.

~~~
fny
Luckily kids don't need to pay the bills for a while. ;)

------
cletus
I'd say the author is way off on this one.

Millenials are the convenient whipping boy for this. As a much-maligned group
(e.g. [1]) many adjectives are attached e.g. Entitled, narcissistic, lazy.

This is of course a generalization that leads to the inevitable fallacious
defense of disprooof by counterexample but honestly this cliche isn't without
cause in my experience.

The education system focuses a little too much on creativity and not at all on
developing skills or any kind of rote learning. I remember seeing an English
documentary about students who got As in GCSE French that couldn't conjugate
_avoir_ (to have). As a side not the British government tackled the grade
inflation problem by creating the A __* grade above an A because too many
people were getting As.

There's been a ton of research showing how it's damaging to tell people
they're inherently special rather than complementing they're effort ("you're
smart" vs "you worked really hard on that") e.g. [2].

So I really don't think that overall the ability to dream is a problem. Just
look at how many think they're going to be movie stars, music successes and
startup billionaires despite the chance of success in any of these being
incepredibly low.

How is this not dreaming run amok?

[1] [http://time.com/247/millennials-the-me-me-me-
generation/](http://time.com/247/millennials-the-me-me-me-generation/)

[2]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/06/the-s-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/06/the-
s-word/397205/)

~~~
CuriouslyC
If millennials are more narcissistic, it's because they've grown up with
social networks where they can get their ego stroked. If anything, the next
generation is going to be much worse. But hey, Facebook is progress, right?

The education system does a terrible job of teaching people how to be
creative. Educators don't even understand creativity, how can they teach it?
Creativity in school is usually a code-word for "this work won't be graded for
content".

Rote learning has been shown time and time again to be the least effective,
least engaging, most dispiriting form of learning. You want someone to learn
something? Let them choose from some projects where the thing you want them to
learn is required to complete it. That works much better, but unfortunately
it's not so convenient for teachers. There's a reason people pick up languages
quickly from immersion learning, and frequently not at all from traditional
language classes.

Ultimately, effective dreaming isn't about imagining yourself being at the
goal post, i.e. being a millionaire or actor. That form of dream is like a
mental opiate that actually saps your motivation. Effective dreaming involves
imagining yourself overcoming challenges and taking action to move towards
your goal. That sort of dreaming actually motivates people to act.

~~~
cletus
[http://www.businessinsider.com/direct-instruction-vs-
inquiry...](http://www.businessinsider.com/direct-instruction-vs-inquiry-
learning-2015-4)

~~~
CuriouslyC
As a counter example, students in Finland do even better than their Chinese
counterparts, with a more flexible instructional curriculum than most western
nations, and less homework (in many cases, none). They're also happier, both
while in school and as a culture, which is what really matters.

To heap some anecdotes on the pile, every really sharp autodidact I've ever
met or read about takes a functional, project-first approach to learning. I've
never met anyone exceptional that focused on rote memorization. I did meet one
good mathematician who would go cover to cover solving problems out of
advanced textbooks, but he viewed them as fun puzzles like you might view
sudoku.

~~~
ctchocula
I am wondering whether this is subject matter specific. For math, I've heard
Freeman Dyson write when he was a child "I had read some of the popular
literature about Einstein and relativity, and had found it very unsatisfying.
Always when I thought I was getting close to the heart of the matter, the
author would say, 'But if you really want to understand Einstein you have to
understand differential equations,' or words to that effect." Later on, he
goes on to say how he ordered Differential Equations by H. T. Piaggio with
over seven hundred problems, most of which he solved over Christmas vacation.
Then when he attempted Peter Eddington's Mathematical Theory of Relativity, it
came very easily after the differential equations practice.

Then for something like software engineering, I can imagine that a "project-
first approach" as you call it may work well.

------
nawitus
"Many thinking teaching kids to code is the solution, but won’t soon software
be written by software?"

Once software engineering is eliminated, pretty much all jobs are eliminated,
and all bets are off.

~~~
127
That is assuming that the software writing software can write software
sophisticated enough to design robots sophisticated enough to replace humans.
Of course there's the possibility of human beings working only as the body for
an AI. But that wouldn't be replacing all jobs.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The software may not be able to do that, but it might be able to write better
software, that writes better software, that writes better software, that
finally does that.

Also known as "recursive self-improvement", "intelligence explosion", or "AI
going FOOM".

------
tboyd47
Isn't instilling values the job of parents? If not, then what are parents for?
Just homework help?

------
dlwdlw
There's a joke somewhere about rowing teams and how the US tried to improve
performance by replacing all the rowers with rowing managers.

Almost all structure is organized into log n tree structures to manage
complexity. There's limited room at the top. All advice that focuses driving
towards these limited spots seem ill conceived to me. The overall goal should
be to improve the overall wealth of each node. But when everyone is trying and
training to be a leader, you end up with 99% rejects with strengths that
actually hamper them to be productive because now they think they're too good
for everything else.

------
taksintikk
Or just plain struggle for something.

Great many of modern children live in an insulated world void of consequences.

~~~
Kenji
I disagree. There are plenty of consequences in a child's life. Probably more
than there used to be. The problem is that they're _stupid_ consequences that
bear no resemblance with real life decision making and consequences. E.g. you
get punished for throwing a snowball or if you play with hot candle wax. You
get bad marks if you don't memorise arbitrary completely useless facts well
enough.

~~~
macspoofing
I think what s/he's saying is that kids are overprotected and don't learn to
deal with adversity.

For example, the anti-bullying campaigns went way too far. Way too far. Kids
are stupid but still have to learn to solve their problems and they have to
have the space to make mistakes.

>You get bad marks if you don't memorise arbitrary completely useless facts
well enough.

Sure. But you still have to learn to deal with it. It's not enough to say
public education sucks so you can just tune out.

------
based2
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_and_the_Mockingbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_and_the_Mockingbird)

[https://translate.google.fr/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&js=y&prev=...](https://translate.google.fr/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fpages.textesrares.com%2Findex.php%2FVaria%2FSun-
Wukong-du-Xiyou-ji-ou-les-Aventures-du-singe-chinois-selon-Wu-Cheng-
en.html&edit-text=&act=url)

------
known
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." \--Einstein

~~~
goldenkey
You must be cutting the quote. Einstein wrote a letter to his son where he
talked about persistence. Learning mathematics or physics to a degree that
allows you to make breakthroughs takes extreme persistence. IQ only lubricates
the brain. No replacement for hard work. Not every discovery is borne of speed
genies, much comes from depth. The difference between calculating and creating
is about depth.

~~~
duncanawoods
Its from an interview:

E: “I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am
right. I do not know that I am. When two expeditions of scientists, financed
by the Royal Academy, went forth to test my theory of relativity, I was
convinced that their conclusions would tally with my hypothesis. I was not
surprised when the eclipse of May 29, 1919, confirmed my intuitions. I would
have been surprised if I had been wrong.”

I: “Then you trust more to your imagination than to your knowledge?”

E: “I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination
is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles
the world.”

[http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/01/einstein-
imagination...](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/01/einstein-imagination/)

~~~
contingencies
Added to
[https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

------
techbio
As long as kids are artificially stovepiped into growing up around kids their
age, this futurists' balance, agility, and empathy are going to continue to be
developed by their peers, and not by _removing things computers can do_ from
the curriculum.

Pretty arrogant to think of steering generations around. They still shouldn't
trust anyone over 30.

------
orschiro
The underlying assumption here is that technological development alone will
not help us overcome the challenges of this millennium.

~~~
veddox
Before we get ahead of ourselves, how about we start with the challenges of
the century? ;-)

~~~
orschiro
Good point. Who says with the current developments, we have more than 100
years? :-)

------
codr4life
Word. I started coding at 8 and I'm not letting my children anywhere near the
stupid gadgets before they're old enough to see through the illusion.
Computers are stupid, humans are so much more than 1's and 0's. Teaching kids
to code is about profits, period; and no one except our controllers really
gives a shit about profits when it comes at the expense of human lives.

~~~
snailletters
This stance seems almost ironic, given your alias. I assume your name is based
in this attitude though.

> at the expense of human lives.

I think you mean to imply that children will become mindless coding machines,
but would you not agree that coding can help to expand your view of the world,
just as learning a language or beginning to paint?

As the article implies:

> Each and every one of us is born curious and creative,

everyone has the ability to form connections in their mind. Is coding as a
facilitator to our curiosity? Maybe it is only a matter of nurturing a coding
experience that complements that curiosity.

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andrewclunn
Soft skills is often a way of dancing around saying that charisma matters. Can
you teach your child to be more attractive? People focus on hard sciences,
math, and complex skills (like proficiency with a musical instrument)
precisely because they are the areas where training matters. In the same way
that instilling good eating habits and making sure your child exercises are
important. Focusing on "creativity" is often just how people who suck at math
and aren't particularly athletic or beautiful tell themselves that they've
special too. Gonna really go full creative artist type? Then college is a
waste.

~~~
goldenkey
Acquiring soft skills comes naturally anyhow. So I agree, take on the hard
technical training early when your mind is ripe. Being well rounded is doable
on the downtime from the hard and exhaustive learning.

~~~
veddox
> Acquiring soft skills comes naturally anyhow.

Yes and no. Basically, learning how to get along with others is a skill you
need to learn and practice just like coding. If you don't have the
opportunities or take the time to practice, you won't learn it.

In a good environment, you have enough contact with other people that "soft
skills" seem to come automatically. But if you spend a significant portion of
your developmental years isolated (for whatever reason), social skills are
anything but natural.

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goldenkey
Honestly, the biggest part of this is teaching safe drug use instead of
stigmatizing it. Dont be afraid of smoking pot or trying lsd or mushrooms
because daddy and grandma said its evil. That rigid adoption and obedience is
mostly a product of dumb kids combined with prude parents. Im saying, doing
lsd or shrooms will give ineffable breadth to ones conscious thought every day
afterwards till death. But dont get fake or cut or unpure drugs from seedy
sources. Straight edge is narrow sighted. Rash risk taking is reckless and
feckless. But knowing that the body is a bunch of endogenic drugs in the first
place and not being afraid of expanding ones' narrow physical 'knock knock
what you see is what you get' is invaluable. Its the difference between being
a technical insect and a creative yet technical powerhouse. Live. Dont obey.

