Dear Sitepoint, your prime minister thinks you're wasting your time

http://blog.decoded.com/post/120598249525/decodeds-reply-to-tony-abbott-why-learning-to

Shame about that tie up with A Book Apart, but that’s just the way he sees it… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I agree that teaching code to kids is important. It should begin from an early age, the same way we teach them a musical instrument or another language - it should be within the school system.

Has anyone here ever taught kids? Has it been difficult?

I taught kids for a long time, but left teaching soon after I got into web code. Still, it’s depressingly easy to teach it to kids. They learn too fast. :stuck_out_tongue:

I think schools in the U.S. should teach kids to read, write, and do arithmetic…

Meh, so old fashioned! Haven’t you heard? Computers can do all that for you now. As long as you can move your finger, it’s fine to be an uneducated, inert blob nowadays.

That is how I read into kids need to be taught computing.

Maybe all of you outside don’t have the same issues we do here, but kids in the U.S. are as illiterate as they come among industrialized nations.

One of my favorite trends is how over 33% of people at my financial institutions cannot pronounce numbers over $9,999.

You balance is “two-five-eight-seven-one and twenty-three cents.”

Yep, one can only hope San Andreas will suck the lot of you into oblivion. :stuck_out_tongue:

:frowning: reminds me of the time I babysat my friend’s 7 year old son. I was helping him with his math homework, and brought out a calculator. He had no idea what it was. When I said, “it’s a calculator” he looked at me like I was an ancient being and said, “oh like the app on my iPhone.”

Yes child. Like the app.

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I would have slapped him over the hand with my slide rule. :stuck_out_tongue:

(My dad used to use a slide rule, and I found it fascinating, though I never understood how to use it at a high level. A brilliant tool, though.)

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fixed that for you :stuck_out_tongue:

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We vehemently disagree. Kids should be taught logical thinking in primary school as part of curriculum, and not because we think they should be going to work at age 11 either!

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Best ‘out of context’ quote ever :smiley:
Get 'em up those chimneys…

Computers only existed on Fireball XL5 or Joe 90 when I was at school, but I cannot agree more about teaching them about the technology they’ll be working with later in life, whether that be coding, or even the basics of digital circuitry (more logic). That said, I would happily see more focus on those basics too - levels of literacy do seem to have diminished in my lifetime.

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If kids can’t read, write, and do arithmetic, then how does teaching them about computers at a young age help?

Hint: Technology is the cause of these problems!!!

Americans, in particular, are as dumb as they are because no one knows how to function without technology. Can you image how maddening it is to have someone working at your bank who doesn’t know how to pronounce your balance in dollars and cents because the number is too big? (I could pronounce numbers in English into the millions and billions by probably age 10…)

If kids don’t learn how to think first without technology, then giving them technology only makes things worse.

I make a living off of a computers, so obviously I see value in them. But I also can do long division on paper, construct proper English sentences. Be understood quite well in written and oral form. Know how to look words up in a dictionary. Know about basic things like U.S. history, geography, world cultures, and so on.

Sorry, but I find it infuriating that people feel the problem is that we aren’t teaching kids enough about technology… :rage:

In addition to mastering reading, writing and arithmetic, it would be nice if schools would teach things like world geography and cultures, diversity, tolerance, humility, social responsibility, volunteerism, and the Golden Rule. Then after that if they want to teach kids about technology, I’m all for it!

End of rant.

My issue with the educational curriculum as it currently stands is we are failing children in how we teach these fundamentals. If kids have a strong understanding of grammar, it is easy to teach them a language - either their own native language, or a new one. The same with maths - if they understand the fundamentals of numbers, they can apply them to more complex concepts as they grow up.

Our problem is we aren’t teaching children the basics, the logic.

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Agreed.

Don’t disagree.

Disagree.

Reading, writing, and about anything under the Humanities by their very nature, do not involve “logic” per se.

Do kids need to learn logic? Of course. But attributing the need to master “logic” so one can then master English composition or reading comprehension is a stretch. (Sounds like the “logic” that only someone at a web development forum would use!) :wink:

Apples and oranges.

Perhaps you were never taught grammar correctly, because there are clear rules.

Humanities subjects are all about reasoning, which is essentially what logic means. If you know how to reason, then you understand logic.

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If you think that all learning and all human thought ties back to logic, then you have a very unique view of life.

Universities have the “Humanities” and then the “Hard Sciences”. Logic falls into the latter.

Humanities are NOT all about reasoning.

Apparently you have never taken English Lit or Art History or Sculpture…

Logic (from the Ancient Greek: λογική, logike)[1] is the use and study of valid reasoning.[2][3] The study of logic features most prominently in the subjects of philosophy, mathematics, and computer science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic

Humanities are all about how we think.

Absolutely. And an important part of learning language is to understand how it can be used to persuade, convince, deceive and so on. One needs to be able to pick it apart logically. Clear thinking and logic is all about language.