I had never seen the Code.org video that went viral, "What Most Schools Don't Teach." Crazy how many tech celebs it features. I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on whether organizations like Code.org are pushing so hard for schools to teach students how to code because they believe in empowering students and all the benefits (creativity, job eligibility, etc.) or if they're doing it purely out of self-interest because they're in bed with companies like Microsoft, and there aren't enough qualified coders to work for those companies. Scary to imagine industry influencing people like Partovi to found companies that groom students to become people they will one day hire.
If they were only doing it purely out of self-interest it wouldn't be so bad. The fact that these assholes really think they're out saving the world means they could end up doing some serious harm.
It takes a special kind of naivete (or from a more cynical perspective, perversion) to think that your vision for education should be foist upon the ~50 million children in public schools in the US. It's absolutely insane that these people are pushing for a nation-wide vocational training program in the midst of the current student loan crisis. "College-educated workers make more money. Everyone should go to college!" "Software developers make more money. Everyone should program!" How about making basic economics a requirement?
And these programs are vocational in nature. The article and those quoted in it play fast and loose with the terms, but computer science is a branch of mathematics and is distinct from programming. Problem solving and thinking in abstractions are useful skills but it's incredibly myopic to think they are somehow unique to programming. The same skills could be acquired from any good teacher in any discipline and definitely won't be learned from a mediocre programming instructor.
I had never seen the Code.org video that went viral, "What Most Schools Don't Teach." Crazy how many tech celebs it features. I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on whether organizations like Code.org are pushing so hard for schools to teach students how to code because they believe in empowering students and all the benefits (creativity, job eligibility, etc.) or if they're doing it purely out of self-interest because they're in bed with companies like Microsoft, and there aren't enough qualified coders to work for those companies. Scary to imagine industry influencing people like Partovi to found companies that groom students to become people they will one day hire.
If they were only doing it purely out of self-interest it wouldn't be so bad. The fact that these assholes really think they're out saving the world means they could end up doing some serious harm.
It takes a special kind of naivete (or from a more cynical perspective, perversion) to think that your vision for education should be foist upon the ~50 million children in public schools in the US. It's absolutely insane that these people are pushing for a nation-wide vocational training program in the midst of the current student loan crisis. "College-educated workers make more money. Everyone should go to college!" "Software developers make more money. Everyone should program!" How about making basic economics a requirement?
And these programs are vocational in nature. The article and those quoted in it play fast and loose with the terms, but computer science is a branch of mathematics and is distinct from programming. Problem solving and thinking in abstractions are useful skills but it's incredibly myopic to think they are somehow unique to programming. The same skills could be acquired from any good teacher in any discipline and definitely won't be learned from a mediocre programming instructor.