Re:Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn'...
by shkkmo on Monday March 18, 2019 @07:57PM
(#19426611)
I took 2 years of HS programming from an excellent teacher, pascal one year then C++ the second. The second year was an AP class and every student got a 4 or 5 on the AP test.
10 years later, I taught myself to do web development but I started with a strong understanding of core concepts and how to read code to understand how a large code base worked. Even before then, the understanding of logic and the practice of procedural thinking was immensely valuable.
A year afterwards, this teacher requested to be allowed to work part time and only teach the programming classes and not the other math classes they wanted to schedule for him. He wanted to be able to do higher paying work on the side to supplement his modest teaching income. Instead the school district fired him and put the football coach in charge of the programming classes. My brother took those classes and they were a complete waste of his time.
So getting legislatures on board with teaching or requiring programming is not enough. We need enough trained quality teachers to teach these classes so we don't waste students time and turn them off to coding. We also need school boards and principles who value these teachers and understand the difficulty with simply slotting other teachers into these positions and giving them a text book to work from.
10 years later, I taught myself to do web development but I started with a strong understanding of core concepts and how to read code to understand how a large code base worked. Even before then, the understanding of logic and the practice of procedural thinking was immensely valuable.
A year afterwards, this teacher requested to be allowed to work part time and only teach the programming classes and not the other math classes they wanted to schedule for him. He wanted to be able to do higher paying work on the side to supplement his modest teaching income. Instead the school district fired him and put the football coach in charge of the programming classes. My brother took those classes and they were a complete waste of his time.
So getting legislatures on board with teaching or requiring programming is not enough. We need enough trained quality teachers to teach these classes so we don't waste students time and turn them off to coding. We also need school boards and principles who value these teachers and understand the difficulty with simply slotting other teachers into these positions and giving them a text book to work from.