
Everyone should get the opportunity to program, but school is a waste of time - philliphaydon
http://www.philliphaydon.com/2013/03/everyone-should-get-the-opportunity-to-learn-to-program-but-school-is-a-waste-of-time
======
rm999
I hate these articles that argue for drastic changes in schooling without the
deep analysis those changes deserve. It takes a certain kind of arrogance to
go from "I wasn't good at X" to "X is useless; let's get rid of it."

I also struggled in high school because I couldn't choose my own curriculum
(as do a lot of people), but what school reinforced in me is the concept that
not everything in life is easy - successful people can turn a challenge into
something constructive. I could go on about all the benefits of a
standardized, well-rounded education, but every time one of these articles
pops up a lot of people do that for me :)

~~~
betterunix
"I could go on about all the benefits of a standardized"

I could just as easily go on about the detrimental effect of standardized
education. The executive summary is this: societies do not advance when
everyone thinks the same way as everyone else.

------
mu_killnine
People are welcome to their cynical, paranoid opinions but there are good
educators (not just teachers) out there. Phillip's data set is approximately
one point yet, from this, he concludes the whole system needs to be scrapped?

It's popular to dump on education but for anyone to conclude that the entire
system is unusable and needs to be destroyed is silly. For some people, like
myself, I fit right into the education system as it exists.

The holy grail of education is a system that is agile enough to cater to the
myriad learning styles and goals of students. This isn't a novel idea but
obviously the challenge is in implementation.

Everyone's entitled to their two minute hate but it'd be a much more
interesting article if he posed some solutions. It would also show he's more
than an armchair quarterback with an axe to grind against an old english
teacher.

------
effbott
This is a reoccurring theme on HN and in the programming subculture in
general: rowdy kid drops out of school, gets written off by well-meaning
adults, learns to program, goes on to start a highly successful tech business,
and then writes a blog post railing against the school system.

While I totally agree that the schooling system is outdated and primarily a
way to socialize children, what programmers tend to forget is that we have a
very special profession that has both low barriers of entry and high pay.
Literally anyone who has access to a computer can learn to program. This is
not the case in most professions! While aspiring programmers can tinker around
with Linux in their spare time, an aspiring doctor can't tinker with a cadaver
without being in school. As programmers we are extremely lucky that all the
tools we could ever need are free and on the web.

~~~
philliphaydon
I think the only reason we see this in the programming subculture is because
it's mostly programmers who are here reading these discussions and writing
these blog posts.

I used to go to school with a guy who dropped out of school at 15, having
failed year 11, get a job working outside, did a part-time course, ended up in
an apprenticeship, worked a few years, started his own business, sold it, he's
28 now and owns his own house without a mortgage...

Put him in front of a computer and the most he can do is use facebook and play
video games.

That's a single case, but there's millions of people just like him, and
there's millions of people who are missing out on having a good life because
we told them they aren't intelligent enough to go to university simply because
they weren't good at one thing at school.

~~~
jeremysmyth
And for every million like him there are a hundred or two hundred million who
are not as driven, motivated, talented.

People who are successful despite being uneducated are outliers. Stories like
OP (and Bill Gates and countless others) are stories. Anecdotes. Single data
points that are meaningless without context. Deciding to forego an education
based on such stories is a risky game.

------
anthonyarroyo
"Schooling in general is a waste of time because it caters to this idea that
life evolves around English, Math, Art, Science and General Knowledge. But
real life doesn’t, and these things don’t help children figure out what they
are good at or enjoy."

Sorry to nitpick, but how can life not evolve around General Knowledge which,
ostensibly, includes all knowledge. Agree with the sentiment, disagree with
the argument.

"The greatest disservice to a cause is to defend it with poor arguments." --
Some Famous Guy Dead Guy Who Couldn't Program

~~~
philliphaydon
Maybe generalizing like that is bad.

Take English for example: In school we used to analyze poems from World War 1
/ 2, and we had to explain why the poet used this word, that sentence, this
style, etc.

The truth is, there's no English Answer. The person wrote what he felt, what
he smelt, saw, heard, etc. He felt that those words and sentences best
described the what he wanted to say.

Yet we butcher these poems on speculation and assumptions. We don't learn
anything from this in my opinion. The entire process of analyzing
books/poems/movies in English class is silly.

With math we are forced to learn how to measure the volume of a triangle...
Sure there may be some time in life where you might put this to use, but MOST
people would never need to know this type of math, we need to instill general
maths but we need to de-emphasize math and allow kids to focus on things they
are interested in and allow them to be creative and learn to their full
potential, if that means they want to go learn advanced math! By all means let
them!

~~~
EliRivers
"Yet we butcher these poems on speculation and assumptions. We don't learn
anything from this in my opinion. The entire process of analyzing
books/poems/movies in English class is silly."

I have conversations with people (adults) who clearly never had to do these
things (or any other similar study of the written word). It's like having a
conversation with a child; they miss puns, subtext, irony, sarcasm, struggle
to consider more than one conflicting opinion at a time, struggle to interpret
beyond the purely literal and struggle to communicate their own thoughts to
others. An inability to communicate beyond such a low level is crippling.

~~~
shadowfox
Interestingly, I have come across at least a couple of people who took great
pride in being extremely literal about what they are saying.

One person explained that he did not want to be misunderstood and thus will
always speak literally. (He, unfortunately, seemed to expect other people do
this too. Which didnt happen all that often. Ergo misunderstandings)

------
barry-cotter
School is not about education, it is about childcare and about indoctrination
and socialisation. Some education occurs but that's not what school is
_for_.School is for getting people to do as they're told, when they're told
to, for inuring people to being ranked and judged.

<http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html>

~~~
gazrogers
What utter crap. Would you rather go back to the time when only the children
of the wealthy would be educated by private tutors and the children of the
poor (who couldn't afford to have their children educated to even basic
standards) went into work as soon as they were able? Without school how do
_those_ kids get an education? Their parents are probably working all hours to
make ends meet so they won't be able to provide the basic numeracy and
literacy skills a child needs to function in society.

~~~
cpursley
The problem is, just because they sit there all day long doesn't mean these
kids are getting an education (in American schools). My wife is a teacher,
it's 80% babysitting and discipline.

~~~
barry-cotter
20% actual education time is damned good. Getting children to sit still for
twenty minutes is hard, getting them to listen as well is appallingly
difficult. And after twenty minutes you may be talking but they're not
listening. Even with motivated adults 20 minutes is about the limit of how
long a lecture csn hold one's attention.

~~~
betterunix
"Even with motivated adults 20 minutes is about the limit of how long a
lecture csn hold one's attention."

A _lecture_ is not the only way to educate people. Yes, _lectures_ are boring,
but _discussions_ are not and in college and grad school I have been in
discussions that went long past the scheduled end time for a class. There is
no reason that could happen in high schools as well.

Yes, things are different below a certain age. Most people who hated school
talk about how much they hated high school and perhaps middle school. There is
a period of time where people start to want to think independently, but where
our education system is based on teaching everyone to think the same things.
Compliance and conformity are the goals in American schools; education is
secondary, mostly a side-effect of teaching compliance.

------
cafard
Santayana said "[even] In the best schools, most time is wasted...", but
frankly I don't think that anyone has come up with a better system.

~~~
barry-cotter
Montessori and Steiner schools. The general level of math and science
education among their graduates is lower than in normal schools but the
children don't receive so much training in what it is to be someone else's
minion.

School time isn't wasted unless you think school is for educating children.
They get all the education they need and there's childcare and socialisation
in first and second place.

------
daGrevis
I couldn't agree more.

~~~
NateDad
I couldn't agree less. If you can't write a proper essay, then you can't write
a paper on the new algorithm you invented, you can't write legible
documentation for the library you wrote, and you can't argue effectively about
the merits of one technology vs. another (change out the terminology for
whatever communication is required in your field).

Basic math (up to and including algebra and geometry) is used all the time in
every day activities. You don't have to be a math whiz and remember every last
formula... but remembering that it's possible to figure out the third side of
a triangle when you have the other sides and the angle between them, or being
able to figure out what the original price of an item was if it's $60 now and
is marked down 20% from its original price.

Knowing history and social studies can help you understand the way the world
works on a macro level, which is useful for figuring out if that new startup
idea is going to be successful or just sit on the shelf with the rest of the
bad ideas.

Real life _does_ revolve around math, history, English, and science. Perhaps
the author is smart enough that he picked this stuff up without doing any of
the work, so he failed the classes but learned what he needed to anyway. But
that doesn't mean you don't need to learn it.

Should we try to help people who don't do well in traditional school
environments? Definitely. But that doesn't mean we throw out traditional
schooling. There's a basic level of knowledge that everyone should have to be
a productive member of society. And you _have_ to test kids, otherwise you
can't know if they're actually learning anything. But that doesn't mean we
should be shaming kids who don't test well. We should be helping them learn,
and changing how we test so that we are testing the knowledge rather than raw
fact regurgitation.

Now, if you're talking college, I can agree a lot more. Taking literature in
college when you're in a CS program is more than dumb, it's a huge waste of
time and money. College should be about teaching you skills for a career. For
STEM careers, that doesn't mean reading Shakespeare.... but it might mean
statistics and probability. The time wasted on a shakespeare class could be
better spent taking a class on compilers or assembly.

~~~
philliphaydon
I'm not suggesting we don't teach kids Math/English, I still think that is
important, but the approach we take by shoving kids the same age in the same
class doesn't work.

Some kids learn faster than others, we shouldn't hold some kids back simply
because they are years younger than other kids. If a 7yo is racing through
maths and enjoys it, put him with kids of his skill level, when you put a 7yo
who is already years ahead in math, with kids his own age learning what he
already knows, he messes around out of boredom.

Just because a few kids work well in a traditional environment doesn't mean we
should hold those kids back, but we do. And likewise slower learning kids who
could be exceptional at subjects are rushed through school and declared 'slow'
or we blame the parents or homework etc for their lack of apparent
intelligence.

~~~
NateDad
You're not wrong... but doing that right, over an entire population is really
hard. I think there is some attempt to do this in many schools. Kids skip
grades, kids stay back. There's honors programs and remedial programs.

Honestly, I think the main reason we aren't doing better educating our kids is
because no one wants to pay for it. Education is expensive. Rigorous testing
of methodologies and re-educating teachers is expensive. We pay our teachers a
pittance... I don't know how anyone expects education to be great when we
aren't trying to attract brilliant people with high salaries.

