Should Kids Learn to Code?

I agree that history is a core subject. The fact is kiddies are new to the scene and someone needs to clue them in on things that happened before they got here. The quality of instruction in K-12 is generally completely abysmal, though.

How about once all the kiddies can read, write properly, and do enough math to figure out basic stuff like which credit card or mortgage to get, then we worry about fancy stuff to teach on the side. As it is people don't understand what they read, can't write worth a damn, and can't do math to save their life.
 
khanable said:
Yes. We're a technology dependent country, and things are only getting more and more dependent.

I also strongly feel Math should be a mandatory subject from k-12.
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Math is a mandatory subject. Was when I went to school anyway. But no subject should be mandatory because not everyone wants to be a programmer or mathematician or even has the aptitude for it. The school system is too rigid and needs more various subjects to choose from, IMO.
 
No, we already have too many of them.

No need to create more competition in an area that is already swarmed.

They should look at places where we actually NEED people, and train a generation of kids in school to fit that demand.
 
Marlfox said:
Practicality? The time educating is better served elsewhere.
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The practicality? Programming teaches kids about processes, flow control/process design, basic logic functions and how to breaks problems into smaller, more managable logical steps. Keeping track of data, manipulating data and storing/managing data reliably, etc.

Hey, what does finger painting teach our kids again? or home-ec arts elective? or learning about the french revolution in history class? Granted, those who fail to learn history and doomed to repeat it, the practicality of teaching programming is probably about as equal as home-skills classes or some social studies classes.

We'd also probably be wise to spend a few weeks in grade 2-3 teaching our kids some memory systems, ways to learn/memorize information faster and learning strategies to dramatically improve what students get out of the next 10+ years of education; albiet, we don't do that either.
 
WBurchnall said:
The practicality? Programming teaches kids about processes, flow control/process design, basic logic functions and how to breaks problems into smaller, more managable logical steps. Keeping track of data, manipulating data and storing/managing data reliably, etc.
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Everything that you list here that I can see applicable to any field other than software engineering can (and should) be taught in maths.

Hey, what does finger painting teach our kids again? or home-ec arts elective? or learning about the french revolution in history class? Granted, those who fail to learn history and doomed to repeat it, the practicality of teaching programming is probably about as equal as home-skills classes or some social studies classes.
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I agree. I have always said that my first 10 years of education could have been compressed into a single year's worth without losing too much. And that time would have been better spent teaching science, maths, and the like, which in my opinion are seriously undervalued at the moment.

We'd also probably be wise to spend a few weeks in grade 2-3 teaching our kids some memory systems, ways to learn/memorize information faster and learning strategies to dramatically improve what students get out of the next 10+ years of education; albiet, we don't do that either.
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Being able to memorize information is far less useful than being able to find said information, or being able to reason it out from first principles.
 
Mr. Pedantic said:
Being able to memorize information is far less useful than being able to find said information, or being able to reason it out from first principles.
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Agreed in principle. Yet ironically right up to and including your undergraduate degree, grades are given according to your ability to regurgitate information you've previous heard, seen or read in every faculty except some fine art courses.

IE, you want to pass calculus I with > 90%? Remember how to calculate the slope, limit laws, derivative laws and the derivative def'n by limits and about 20 types of generic question patterns that are given over and over again.

Calculus II > 90%? Remember what you learned in calculus 1 and learn to repeat it in reverse order(anti-derivatives//integration). Learn to be able to make small triangles under a curve and add up the area via sum? Wow you know reiman's sums, simpsons rule, etc etc. Congrats, you passed calculus II.

Calculus III > 90%? Memorize how to do dot product, cross product and a few other functions in three dimensions and make sure you haven't forgotten how to derivate/integrate. Learn partial derivatives and double integration. You win calculus III.

So on so on.
 
I started with BASIC on a IBM PCjr when I was still in elementary, then later moved on to QBasic on a 486 (still in elementary school), then later on went to write custom scripts for mIRC when I got to high school, and finally today I'm into PHP/mySQL making custom sites. I thank my father for getting me into programming at a young age, it's literally changed my life.
 
My "adopted" nephew is now in college, I know he's taking computer courses - escapes me atm just what all he is taking.

But in his junior and senior years in HS he was able to take elective coding classes. The fact that he'd been making and coding mostly using PHP/mySQL his own sites since he was 10 years old meant that he a) was fast-tracked in his junior year since the courses were really only for seniors - he was teaching the teachers how to use the Macs the school gave the students for school work (scary, right?) and was helping teach some of the basics to the seniors.

This was, again, elective, on top of his normal school workload which wasn't minimal. Had maths, history, etc.

I think if a young person shows the interest and has the aptitude, that as an elective it might not be a bad thing.
 
Why does everyone think the basics are so important? What is the point in having a kid that can memorize the times tables to 30? You can teach basic logic in any setting. The way I see it the setting might as well have some practical value in the real world. You could teach logical thinking and problem solving skills in the form of abstract colored patterns in an IQ test to get the basics. Or you could teach them the same thing in the form of a computer programmign language they might actually use in the real life.

Also I think a big part of school is just introducing children to many different fields. Somone might not have liked Art, woodworking, or french but being introduced to it they probably learned something about how things are done. And a few will love something they never would have tried otherwise. Others will realize they are now happier than ever to pay someone else to do that for them. But at least the formal introduction gave them some idea. I feel one of the biggest problems I saw in college was people who thought they wanted to be somethign then hated it when they actually found out what it was like.
 
When I went to school (in the 80s/90s), Computers were part of the core curriculum in the lower grades, and electives in middle/high school. The earliest grades did involve some amount of programming, as well (mostly LOGO and Basic). Given that we're much more dependent on computers now than we were back then, I think that it should have a larger part of the curriculum.

We also seem to have gone back several steps in terms of getting kids to code from where we were when I was growing up. I fondly remember typing in the programs featured in kids magazines like 3-2-1 Contact, as well as more general audience ones like Compute, not to mention making my own (and now, earning my income from it). While there definitely are still programs published in computer magazines today, it's more buisness/adult hobbyist-oriented.
 
Kids, teenagers and 20 somethings should learn to code. The Internet and software is going be more and more prevalent. Within 20 years if you don't know how to code or know the basics finding a job is going to be even tougher!

So yes teach your kids the language of future world - code.

There are sites out there now that make it easier and fun to learn how to code. Check out

CodePupil
TeamTreeHouse
 
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