you wanna know how impoverished the world of computer education has been since about 2000?
in 1980, there were elementary schools teaching 10 year old kids how to program BASIC on Apple II's, Commodore PET's and other computers
Discussion
Loading...
Discussion
@beka_valentine Not disagreeing, but I wonder if the whole makerspace movement is kinda a counter example to your point? Maybe there is less energy going into writing code, but that same creative energy is going into a lot of different areas now ... 3d modeling, 3d printing, arduino and embedded coding, maybe python instead of basic in some cases, music is still a thing. In any case the world is definitely changing. Technology is changing. Complexity is increasing and folding in on itself.
When I was in 10th or 11th grade my dad got us a used commodore vic-20. I spent countless afternoons after school writing little programs on that thing, only to see my little brother come in and delete them all (like tearing down my lego creations.) Later we got an Apple II with a floppy drive! My high school didn't have much for teaching anything with computers, what we did have was tacked on to the end of a math class when I was a senior.
Now a lot of USA schools have a first robotics team which (I think) scratches a lot of the same itches you are talking about ... but the teams get huge so each kid can get really specialized which isn't such a great thing. But they are seeing how group projects come together, they are at least exposed to the challenges their team mates are working on.
My youngest just graduated college last year and both my kids had way way more opportunities to explore interesting side ventures in school than I ever did.
These days a 4th grader can install python on their phone ... so what's stopping a motivated kid today to learn about coding just like what was stopping a motivated kid from learning coding 45 years ago?
(I didn't see my first computer up close until I was probably 8th grade ... but it blew me away with it's coolness and ability to remember my name after it asked me to type it in!)
@beka_valentine these Usborne books from the 80s are an entire computer architecture class, but for kids. https://archive.org/details/Usborne_Guide_to_Computer_Jargon_1983_Usborne_Publishing/page/n17/mode/2up
@beka_valentine Yup. In the early '80s we had BBC micros in my intermediate school, and we were taught Logo on Apple ][e machines in high school.
We also figured out how to make single-sided 5.25" floppies double-sided, using the blade from a pencil sharpener, because the school was charging extra for doubles :)
now granted, Peninsula School is in Menlo Park, so you'd expect them to be very technically biased, but when I was in 4th grade in the mid 90s, I learned some Logo programming at an intermediate school on Long Island on Macintoshes
@beka_valentine In the 1980s, a whole generation of children in the UK were taught at least some programming on BBC Micros.
this was a lower class school that wasn't some fancy school for techies
but I from what I know of schools today, they're not teaching kids to program. they're expecting the kids are computer literate, or that they'll learn it at home at least
but what kind of computer literacy is that? they're starting out on iPads or iPhones, browsing the web, playing games, and whatnot. maybe they'll have Chromebooks to do the same
most of them aren't learning how computers work, and the computers are terrible for that anyway
@beka_valentine
> starting out on iPads or iPhones ... maybe they'll have Chromebooks
This is what I think is a major problem. Kids love to take stuff apart and put it back together, and it is impossible and/or illegal to that with a lot of the tech we start them on. If we introduced children to computers you can put together yourself, physically and in software, then I am sure many would be enthused to learn how they work.
now what kind of education is that? you're not empowered, you're not the one in charge of the computer, you're a consumer, you're eyeballs for corporations to sell software to
that's what we're teaching kids that computers are for: buying, consuming, etc
there IS such a wealth of information, interpreters, compilers, free dev environments available nowadays that any kid can easily launch themselves in to this stuff.
Its just not taught in school, and they have to do it in their own time.
Is that such a big deal?
we're not teaching kids to understand computers, to control them, to create their own computer experiences and bend the machine to their will
we're teaching them to ask corporations to give them what they need or want
that's no education, that's a trap
@beka_valentine Usually a people need to be colonised in order for the next generation to be so decoupled from skills and raw fundamentals.
@beka_valentine
Good point, still true. I built my own pretty useless BASIC computer in 1981 (ZX80) which gave me a deep dive into nontrivial electronic assembly and learning an imperative mode language. Then by 1989 I was in college and the classroom was full of 386's running only what the floppy drive allowed, incl DOS. It felt shrink wrapped to death. The more recent success of eg. the Raspberry Pi at getting young people interested in programming from scratch again, is notable however. :)
@beka_valentine I could not agree more. It goes for a lot of other stuff too. Even bicycles (for me they're the most open source example of open sourcery) are unrepairable, untweakable and incomprehensible to a lot of the kids I know.
in the 1970s, my mom, at a highschool on Long Island, was taught to program BASIC using PUNCH CARDS
she's not a programmer, she's not technical, but in the 1970s, the computer was the future and everyone needed to learn it NOW NOW NOW
1+ more replies (not shown)
bonfire.cafe
A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate
Automatic federation enabled