Computer Science was supposed to be taught to everyone, and wasn’t about a job
computinged.wordpress.com
computinged.wordpress.com
The bar is so low for math and science literacy compared to the humanities that surely there are many elementary things which should come before computer science.
If programming is increasingly important for everybody (I don't doubt), then in my opinion the first thing to do is to go and research (or look up the research on) how professionals who aren't CS majors but write programs do it. I imagine there isn't going to be much overlap with a typical B.S. in C.S. curriculum.
This quote seems relevant and timely, if exaggerated:
"A handful of people, having no relation to the will of society, having no communication with the rest of society, will be taking decisions in secret which are going to affect our lives in the deepest sense."
But it's beyond me how some sort of computer science for everyone improves their ability to deal with problems in algorithms developed by the FAANGs and other companies working with the government. Ok, I know what a DFA is, now what?
During part of my elementary school years, they were having students all learn Logo. But I don't recall it opening any vistas of experimentation. It seemed like a fad where everyone checked boxes, did some exercises, and moved on. Despite learning about other kinds of programming outside school, I never realized there was anything more to Logo than the most basic turtle commands.
Whenever people talk about general computer literacy, I imagine more of the same.
Forget computer science or programming; IT literacy itself is manifold in nature. We need to analyze the goals of computer and IT literacy before we even begin teaching it.
Along comes IT who takes whatever hardware & software they can get possessing varying degrees of scientific advancement, and tries to network everybody to their wildest dreams without losing any data.
I would say computer science is the art of using computers to make advancements whether or not the advancements are made to the very computers or software themselves or not.
Lots of worthwhile computer science can actually be accomplished without writing any software or doing any engineering.
Anyway, this is the 21st century, every student was expected to be much more familiar with both computer science and coding by now, so that the aggregate benefits overall would be far more widespread than in just a few "tech" centers.
Every more-computer-literate high school graduate could not have been expected to be an expert, but every org of a certain size would ideally have enough in-house talent to at least take care of their own software needs by now.
Maybe someone could update "How to Lie With Statistics" (I think it would need a truly massive effort) and make a course out of that.
Look at a recipe book. That's how non-CS majors do it.
And then look at the number of people who can't follow basic recipes.
I saw the curriculum and it's really great but still have doubts of we have enough qualified teachers to really bring it across
Many schools teach the first. Kids are taught how to use computers, how to make websites etc.
The second type is the focus of those Logo/turtle type curricula I keep hearing anecdotally.
But in both cases the gap remains and true understanding of the systems our lives depend on today remain out of reach.
I'm not saying that everyone needs to fully understand operating systems or graphics pipelines. But there's a huge gap from for loops and if conditions to a desktop environment. And so the things we use on a daily basis still feel like magic to most
This is good thing. Unless parents actively taught kids to use computer, they don't know how to do it. Many kids don't even have all that much access to computer before having classes in school. Household have one, but it is occupied either by parents or by older sibling.
Even kids of IT people can easily end up not knowing how to open file, edit it, view website copy it or do anything else simple.
If schools skip the step of teaching kids to use computer, those kids don't stand a chance in classes that assume that knowledge.
And even though we all learned the same thing (karel the robot, quick basic), for each of us it was a gateway drug to something different.
Two of my friends took that knowledge and started playing with making animations and animated text in quickbasic.
I used it to write music with the play command. I eventually learned HTML and my first website was about stealth aircraft. (SR-71, F-117A)
We all ended up doing different things. Our passions still dictated what we did with our programming knowledge.
It’s the exposure and creating the spark that’s key.
Think about the explosion of productivity growth/societal wealth, if there were 2-10x the current number of trained people in programming/comp sci (following same skill distribution). Many great ideas are likely not pursued due to high cost of talent... It's pretty much necessary to use VC these days for anything big.
It's very odd to me that academia seems mostly divorced from optimizing towards societally beneficial outcomes. E.g. there should be obvious incentives to push people towards economically productive degrees.
Or even better, vocational bootcamps should become the norm. But perhaps longer like a year or two.
Schools should really have skin in the game in terms of financial success of the students afterwards. Otherwise there's a large disalignment of incentives.
I reject the idea that school is about becoming educated rather than getting a job. You think all these kids are taking tens to hundreds of thousands in debt for enlightenment? We have the internet now, come on.
I think what they teach is good. I think someone after 4 weeks of bootcamp knows more git commands then I did after 6-7 years of college.
But it still takes bootcamp + X (2-3?) years of experience to equal a fresh college grad. Who is paying for this training, the place that hires the person? Why do this over hire someone who already has experience?
So yah, maybe 2-3 year bootcamps would be a happy middle ground. There’s a reason the trades have a vocation program. Could you imagine giving electricians a 4 week bootcamp and sending them loose on client sites alone? But we try that with developers.
Some of them do, and this manifests as admitting lower-performing rich kids and maintaining an active alumni network for placing graduates into jobs. (The 'skin' here is making sure the donation and endowment stream remains robust over time).