
State schools to make computer science a core subject – Boston Herald - rbanffy
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2018/01/state_schools_to_make_computer_science_a_core_subject
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ng12
Maybe I was just unlucky but every programming teacher I had in high school
was utterly incompetent. I scored very low on the AP Computer Science test and
almost backed out of my major in college -- the only reason I didn't was
because a professor told me I was better off forgetting everything I had
learned about programming in high school.

I just don't see how they would be able to hire a significant number of
knowledgable instructors at a teacher's wage. I worry that this could do more
harm than good by advancing programming's reputation as an arcane art not
suitable for mere mortals.

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jbob2000
They just need to create a spark, not light the fire and keep it burning.
Having tools available to kids and structured time to play with it is a good
first step.

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drallison
Outstanding, but I fear the curriculum wonks are confused about the nature of
computer science. What needs to be taught is problem solving, quantitative
thinking, abstraction, algorithms, mathematics, statistics, numerical
analysis, game theory, and so forth. Coding (that is, programming) is not part
of the core of computer science. Making web pages is not part of the core, nor
is communication via social media. Learning how to think rationally is at the
core of computer science.

People (students and their elders) seem to have lost the ability to read and
understand. The laws of rhetoric are no longer studied; fallacies are embraced
everywhere. Many people find it difficult to distinguish between fake news and
real news. Evidence is often ignored when making decisions.

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Psilidae
Personally, I don't think CS should be a core subject in primary schools. I
think it'd be better to have some kind of technology competency subject, to
help teach basic use, problem solving, security and privacy practices, and
whatnot. A bit of programming and the core concepts of logical thinking and
algorithms wouldn't be a bad idea, but I think _most_ students wouldn't
actually need to know CS.

If they want to address job demand, I feel it'd be better to increase teacher
pay to get better CS teachers, so there'd be a few _good_ CS graduates, rather
than many _average_ CS grads.

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souprock
They could cover: bash and typical shell tools, make with markup languages,
octave, spreadsheet scripting, R, Julia, and possibly version control.

That does a good job of supporting the fancier math and science classes, both
there and in college, and could actually be useful in jobs that aren't too
obscure.

