Re: Programming languages for the very young

From: Anton van Straaten (anton_at_appsolutions.com)
Date: 01/16/04 

Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 07:34:13 GMT

Brian Harvey wrote:
> But another thing that's different is that today, even more so than when
> I wrote the paper, the kids know more about using computers than the
> teachers do.

The problem I see is that even if that's true, it doesn't mean there aren't
things that the kids need to be taught. Even if many kids somehow absorb
everything they need to know just by using their Gameboy Advance and N-Gage
cellphone, there are still a lot who really don't learn enough about really
basic things, like word processing or spread*** use, or finding their way
around an operating system. There are a surprising number of people in
their 20s whose only computer knowledge is how to get from the Windows Start
button to Internet Explorer and the Yahoo home page - to them, some
combination of Yahoo+IE *is* the computer. That's all very well, one might
say, they can surf and buy books from Amazon and generally get stuff done,
but when they find they aren't able to make a credible stab at writing up
their own resume in a word processor, I think there's a problem.

Things like this do seem to me to qualify as a "literacy" issue, in a pretty
similar sense to reading and writing literacy. In the paper, you wrote
about the shift to high school education as the norm, and said "Now, almost
everyone has a high school diploma, and it's worthless." But (a) presumably
you're not arguing that high school education should be less universal, and
(b) it's not worthless, it's essential for economic survival, and (c) isn't
the real lesson there the fact that the nation as a whole is a global
economic leader which tops the lists in all sorts of other measures of
productiveness, efficiency, inventiveness, and producing intellectual
property which is consumed by other countries? Much of this is due to the
relatively highly educated population. Similar claims apply to other
countries which have succeeded in giving most of its populace a decent
education.

Where's the downside here, and are we so sure that something similar doesn't
apply to "computer
literacy"? I think there are reasons to think that something similar does
apply. Many of the smartest people will figure things out on their own
regardless, but it's the education of the majority of the population that
makes for the kind of economy and standard of living that the US has.

> And, have you ever seen the actual curriculum of one of these courses?
> Most of them seem to be dedicated to making sure that no kid will ever
want
> to have anything to do with computers. It was even worse then -- today
some
> "literacy" courses aren't full of vocabulary to memorize (central
processor,
> RAM, ROM, Megahertz, ...). But they still tend to be taught by the same
> dragons who used to teach the typing class, and often they're
indistinguishable
> from the typing class.

I have a computer-literate (sic) friend who's a school board member, so I
have some idea of the problems. But you could apply this argument to just
about anything that's taught in school - when you look at what goes on at
schools close up, it's amazing anyone ever learns anything. I don't think
that's an argument for not trying, although I'm all in favor of finding ways
to try harder and do better.

There's a kind of bootstrapping issue here, or cycle of ignorance. If
teachers don't know enough about computers to teach their students, students
aren't going to learn as much as they could. I know kids whose parents know
nothing about computers, and as a result, the kids don't get as much useful
exposure to computers as they could, even when they have one in their home.
So there are problems here, but the way I would characterize these problems
is to say that there needs to be more & better computer literacy - but until
we have that, the bootstrapping process is going to seem backwards and
inefficient.

> Thinking more deeply about it: Computers keep getting cheaper, but
they're
> still pretty expensive, in enough-to-be-useful quantities, compared with
> things like books and teachers. So "computer literacy" is always at the
> expense of something else. And I would still argue that, even in a job
that
> involves using computers, the actual computer skill is the least of what
> you have to know. For example, there are kids who know a lot more than I
do
> about which button means what in M$ Word, but who still can't write a
> coherent paragraph.

Probably the majority of people employed in the U.S. do not need to write
coherent, original paragraphs as part of their job. An enormously
significant number do need to use computers, and an alarmingly high
proportion aren't very good at it. This would argue for computer literacy
as being more important than the old-fashioned kind...

It seems to me that kids get plenty of instruction on reading and writing,
and somehow some of them come out being able to do it quite well, whereas
others don't (and a whole spectrum in between). One question is whether all
that instruction makes any difference at all. If it does, then I think kids
should also be taught other things, including computer skills. If it
doesn't make a difference, then none of this matters.

> Those kids are not going to get jobs at which their word processing skills
> matter -- the computers at McDonald's have pictures of the menu items
> on the keys, I think. :-)

The McDonald's example in the paper caught my eye, too. Let's say I'm wrong
about universal computer literacy being desirable. In that case, why stop
there? For what reason do we teach everyone math in school, for example?
Don't *exactly* same arguments apply? From the paper:

> Now, what does the person behind the McDonald's counter need to
> know about computers? He only needs to know that when you ask
> for a Quarter-pounder with cheese, he should push the button which
> says ``Quarter-pounder with cheese.'' That's it. Nothing about input
> unit, output unit, processor, and memory; nothing about programming
> either.

Similarly, the person behind the McDonald's counter doesn't need to know
much about math. All he needs to know is how to translate the cash given by
the customer into numbers to enter into the register, and the inverse of
that operation in order to pay out the change. (Perhaps a display with
pictures of the bills and coins could help here, or just a fully-automated
register.) General-purpose addition and subtraction is useless to these
people, and we should stop bothering to require that students achieve "Math
Literacy".

> I'd rather hire someone who has *real* literacy and teach him how to
> use a computer than hire someone who's a whiz at computers and try
> to teach him English and critical thinking skills.

I don't think that's relevant, unless it can be shown that shifting focus
to, essentially, remedial English and critical thinking for students who
need it would change this situation. (Although I'm all for more teaching of
critical thinking.) The issue is what subjects get taught to everybody. If
anything, what you're describing is an argument for not teaching computer
skills to the smartest students, since they can pick it up on their own.
The rest still need it, though, for the same reasons that they need
instruction in "real" literacy.

> So, yeah, although I'd change some details today, I still stand by the
main
> ideas in that paper.

OK, so how do we decide in advance which people to put on the McDonald's
track, where they learn to read a restricted vocabulary list replete with
trademarks, and get a one-month intro to counting change? I'm exaggerating
the case, but part of my point is that unless you try to teach something,
students and their teachers may not find out whether or not they're good at
it. I don't think it makes sense to let kids simply follow their own
interests entirely (which seemed to be one of the suggestions in the paper),
there needs to be some pushing. And the pushing needs to be distributed
across a range of topics, especially those which could impact a student's
economic survival. The paper made the point that computer knowledge is not
a free ticket to success, but lack of it can contribute to poorer
performance, or failure.

Anton

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