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I'd say it's the parents. Listening to parents of elementary school kids they seem to get confused or angry if there isn't one single right answer to an assignment. For example drawing shapes one line at a time and listing the lines as "commands" to a computer. There might be multiple ways to form a shape.

No use trying to argue that it might be valuable to understand how to think with algorithms, even though it might produce several different answers.

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You hit the nail on the head here. Most of my family is entirely and strongly anti-education. My brother and I (32 and 29, respectively) were the first and so far only people in our family to ever go to college. My grandparents championed it, but our father has gotten progressively more and more anti-intellectual (he's what you might call a "crazy redneck"). Upon our last meeting he actually asked me if I am "actually smart" or if I am "just good with the computer." The sad part is he had a chance to go to college, my grandparents were going to pay for it if he would have just gone. But he's paranoid and thinks college is where they convince you to not love Jesus and to get rid of your guns.

That just moves the goal post, doesn't it? Such a parent is as much a broken kid as their offspring in this respect.

The parents might be afraid that their child could "fail" such an assignment, even if it's elementary school and the children aren't graded.

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