Are we giving access to computers to kids too early?

[Tomm]

The basic paradigms of programming haven't changed much in 30+ years, and the basics of designing a solution in c++, java, Basic and numerous other languages are all fairly similar. The big differences are in the syntax and in the specific features and shortcuts that are built into each language - differences which are all easy enough to adapt to once you know the basics. Proper teaching of programming should allow the student to hop between many languages rather easily.

It's the problem-solving and analysis skills that are so good to learn early.

Again, learning programming is not the same as using a computer as an educational aid for some other subject. It's a fundamentally different experience.

Basically, you are seeing education as vocational training, your viewpoint is different from the Christian ideal of education.
The Christian ideal of education is to form a complete person, rather than to train someone for the job market. We should
put the welfare of the children before economy, especially spiritual and character formation. If we allow children to
learn to use computers at such young age, then there's a high probability that they'd be affected by the negative aspects
of computers, in the long run.

Real life observations tell us that there's a high % of adults who get affected by the negative aspects of computers, if we adults (a high %, in the long run) cannot escape from it, then how could little children ?

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Basically, you are seeing education as vocational training, your viewpoint is different from the Christian ideal of education.

Well, in terms of education, shouldn't "producing skills that will help one succeed" be fairly high on the list?

I'm not really sure what the "Christian ideal of education" is...are you referencing something similar to the "Liberal Arts"/"Producing well rounded graduates" school of thought?

The Christian ideal of education is to form a complete person, rather than to train someone for the job market.

Not to sound snarky...but it's that attitude toward education that get's people a $75,000 philosophy degree and a job at Starbucks to try and pay off the loan...

I posted on this in a thread a while back, but much of the woes related to the idea that "it's getting tougher and tougher for young graduates to find work" are centered around the fact that students are being encouraged to pursue less and less practical fields of study in the interest of being "well-rounded", thus leaving them under prepared for the real world that awaits on the other side of graduation in terms of practical job skills.

Philosophy & Art degree majors have increased by nearly 40% in the last 10 years, meanwhile, the number of graduates who find work in their selected field within 6 months of graduation has dropped by 35% in that same time period. That's no coincidence...

We should
put the welfare of the children before economy, especially spiritual and character formation.

Spiritual formation is a private matter that should be developed in one's private life, not in an educational institution.

Putting emphasis on economic factors IS a good thing for the welfare of the children. Children and Youth with one day be adults and they need to be prepared to enter the job market if they're to feed & house themselves.

Real life observations tell us that there's a high % of adults who get affected by the negative aspects of computers, if we adults (a high %, in the long run) cannot escape from it, then how could little children ?

Do you have any specifics, data, or stats that correlate to / or support your real life observations?

 

[iluvatar5150]

Basically, you are seeing education as vocational training

No, I don't. Not at all.

your viewpoint is different from the Christian ideal of education. The Christian ideal of education is to form a complete person, rather than to train someone for the job market. We should put the welfare of the children before economy, especially spiritual and character formation.

For the purposes of this discussion, my concern about how this impacts a person's job prospects are incidental. I think programming is a good skill to learn, because it teaches a kind of holistic, systemic analysis and problem solving approach that few other disciplines do. I haven't gotten paid to be a programmer in several years, but the underlying skills that it taught me influence my thoughts and decisions every single day, at work and at home. Learning how to break down a problem and generalize it by identifying similarities between it and other problems influences everything from how I interpret scripture, to how I communicate with my wife, to how I cook dinner. Learning to identify and plan for edge cases ahead of time influences how I manage my budget and how I deal with my general contractor.

If we allow children to learn to use computers at such young age, then there's a high probability that they'd be affected by the negative aspects of computers, in the long run.

Real life observations tell us that there's a high % of adults who get affected by the negative aspects of computers, if we adults (a high %, in the long run) cannot escape from it, then how could little children ?

I've tried several times to make the distinction between teaching programming and merely plopping a kid in front of a computer to be used as some sort of educational aid. They're not the same. They're very, very different. If you can't come back with anything more substantial than this poorly-supported fear-mongering, then I'm skeptical that you really know what you're talking about.

 

[JustMeSee]

Alice is a Carnegie Mellon programming language which is object oriented, for education, and is graphics/animation based. While it and other learning languages, will never be used professionally, it is a fun and rewarding way of learning programming methodology.

 

[DogmaHunter]

I know a woman who ran one of the first Internet/web site graphic design boutiques in the dot-com business. She was entirely self-taught, and could hand-code HTML the way literate people can write English. She also has a background (and degree) in traditional graphic design and when you compare her sites to the ones churned out by a business's secretary for pennies on the dollar, it shows.

Great. Perhaps she is an exception to the rule but....

From 13 years of experience, I can pretty much guarantee you that after small code reviews, I can pick the "self-taught" programmers with great accuracy.

I think people in this discussion focus way to much on the code and forget what the proposed course really is all about.

To become an actual professional software engineer... you're not going to do that with a an hour or two per year in high school. Software engineering is a college or university level course by itself. The point of giving such classes in high school is not to produce programmers that can get a job as a programmer.

This sentiment seems to be all about the current hype of "apps" and whatnot. People tend to forget that this is a very specialised field that requires quite some study.

I remain of the opinion that it is completely pointless to have highschool students dive into any particular language. The little time available could be put to much better use if it remains a theoretical class while actual code in any particular language takes a backseat as purely "illustration" and "examples".

 

[WalksWithChrist]

Alice is a Carnegie Mellon programming language which is object oriented, for education, and is graphics/animation based. While it and other learning languages, will never be used professionally, it is a fun and rewarding way of learning programming methodology.

I was going to mention Alice. There are other sites that focus on programming for children. I was looking at one (forget the name) recently and it looked really nice.

Learning programming is good for school kids to learn. Even if it's just an intro course. I wish I'd learned programming in school. I learned it somewhat in college and it never really sunk in properly. I ended up in IT anyways, and I still can't code. lol

 

[FreeSpirit74]

I posted on this in a thread a while back, but much of the woes related to the idea that "it's getting tougher and tougher for young graduates to find work" are centered around the fact that students are being encouraged to pursue less and less practical fields of study in the interest of being "well-rounded", thus leaving them under prepared for the real world that awaits on the other side of graduation in terms of practical job skills.

Philosophy & Art degree majors have increased by nearly 40% in the last 10 years, meanwhile, the number of graduates who find work in their selected field within 6 months of graduation has dropped by 35% in that same time period. That's no coincidence...

Hence my immense joy at being born into a family where one parent graduated with Honors from Business school and the other made his career in STEM (mechanical engineering). They both were born at the tail-end of the Depression and therefore understood the difference between "needs" and "wants" when it came time to spend their income.

 

[beaverpond]

many of our high school kids are attending the vocational center that is on campus...many graduate with a certificate in that field and can go straight into the work force and hit the ground running. Some companies will hire with just that certificate and then pay for the further education for the right individual as in the case of my brother...started out with a welding certificate who was hired to work in a trailer shop on big rigs, eventually was sent to school by this company to further his education in auto mechanics to include diesel mechanics.

Over time he has worked his way up to shop foreman and remember he only started off with a welding and auto mechanics certificates. He has not paid for any of his further education, the employer has. If it can happen for him, how many other companies are doing this for their employees in all kinds of fields...not just welding and diesel & auto mechanics.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

many of our high school kids are attending the vocational center that is on campus...many graduate with a certificate in that field and can go straight into the work force and hit the ground running.

Actually, in Switzerland (even where kids have the options of a free liberal arts education), over half of tech students opt for vocational training due to the fact that the job placement rates are higher, you're done sooner, and for the most part, there's no economic or skill based advantage by entering the tech industry with a Liberal Arts degree as opposed to a vocational certificate.

 

[Glass*Soul]

(2) If we allow them to search anything just with Google, they'd
not know how to use dictionaries, encyclopaedia and other types
of reference books. They'd become lazy.

You know, as I read this, I had a little wager with myself that somewhere is a dusty ancient quote decrying the evils of encyclopedias. I just knew it.

Here it is. It is from Sir Thomas Brown's Pseudodoxia Epidemica dated 1646 and references the first ever encyclopedia compiled by Pliny the Elder in 77AD. It blames the ready availability of the information therein for the propagation of most Vulgar Errors. One might say misinformation was going viral in Sir Thomas Brown's day due to the general intellectual laziness (credulity) engendered by too easy access to this popular encyclopedia and he was determined to act as the Snopes of his time. LOL

Now what is very strange, there is scarce a popular error passant in our days, which is not either directly expressed, or diductively contained in this Work; which being in the hands of most men, hath proved a powerful occasion of their propagation. Wherein notwithstanding the credulity of the Reader is more condemnable then the curiosity of the Author: for commonly he nameth the Authors from whom he received those accounts, and writes but as he reads, as in his Preface to Vespasian he acknowledgeth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_History_(Pliny)

How did I find this? I Googled it.

 

[Tomm]

Researchers Ofer Malamud and Cristian Pop-Eleches came up with the following
conclusion at the end of their study Home Computer Use and the Development of Human
Capital:
"Our main results indicate that that home computer use has both positive and negative
effects on the development of human capital. Children who won a voucher had significantly
LOWER school grades in Math, English and Romanian but significantly higher scores
in a test of computer skills and in self-reported measures of computer fluency."

In the above quote, voucher refers to a voucher which helps a low income family to obtain
a computer.

In the above study, 2 groups of children were compared:
- those obtained computers through vouchers
- those did not own computers because they didn't receive vouchers (they were from low income families)




(Source: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15814)

 

[brinny]

Some countries are not only introducing computer lessons in primary schools,
they are also pushing for computer programming lessons for school children.

Do you agree ?

No.I don't agree. It most likely is connected to the Common Core curriculum that is currently near being mandated for all school children in the US (even home schooled children) that the federal government will be mandating if they move on with their plans. Only thing is, Bill Gates children, who is behind funding this, are immune to it. Here's a brief synopsis of Common Core:

 

[beaverpond]

Common Core curriculum is not mandated to be taught to home school children to even a 1/3 of the US States. We are talking a very small fraction of children in our country. Fortunately many states still leave it up to the families for what they want to use for curriculum and many states do require some form of annual testing to show what kind of progress the home school student is making from year to year. Many cases home school students are making better progress than public school students across the board.

 

[brinny]

Common Core curriculum is not mandated to be taught to home school children to even a 1/3 of the US States. We are talking a very small fraction of children in our country. Fortunately many states still leave it up to the families for what they want to use for curriculum and many states do require some form of annual testing to show what kind of progress the home school student is making from year to year. Many cases home school students are making better progress than public school students across the board.

This will be changing.

Soon, this will be in place, for instance, and mandated by the federal government (Common Core math):

2+2=5

 

[beaverpond]

but when you have so many states rejecting or taking reduced federal funding for schools because they disagree with standardized testing and so many are taking a stand against common core, several states have even passed and gone back to the old educational format because students and teachers are struggling with common core

 

[brinny]

but when you have so many states rejecting or taking reduced federal funding for schools because they disagree with standardized testing and so many are taking a stand against common core, several states have even passed and gone back to the old educational format because students and teachers are struggling with common core

The federal government via Bill Gates is attempting to change that-the freedom to opt out of Common Core (as we speak), and making Common Core mandated with every student in the Us, including home school-ers (except for Bill Gates' own children's school in Seattle).

 

[beaverpond]

I guess we shall see then

 

[matumotonanako]

Nowadays computer is becoming more and more population.Today's children are all like play the computer games and use the computer to finish their homeworks.I think it's the universal culture pattern in now world.School must be keep pace with the trend like the people must be keep pace with the God's work.

 

[Ada Lovelace]

I just read this NPR article that made me think about this thread. http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015...eschool?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=education

I definitely agree on the importance of computer science literacy, so I think this is cool.

 

[Tomm]

Nowadays computer is becoming more and more population.Today's children are all like play the computer games and use the computer to finish their homeworks.I think it's the universal culture pattern in now world.School must be keep pace with the trend like the people must be keep pace with the God's work.

Researchers Ofer Malamud and Cristian Pop-Eleches came up with the following
conclusion at the end of their study Home Computer Use and the Development of Human
Capital:
"Our main results indicate that that home computer use has both positive and negative
effects on the development of human capital. Children who won a voucher* had significantly
lower school grades in MATH, English and Romanian but significantly higher scores
in a test of computer skills and in self-reported measures of computer fluency."
(Source: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15814)

They concluded that there is evidence that computers affect student performance
negatively. Matumotonanako, is this a trend that we must keep up with?


* voucher to obtain a computer for a low income family