Re: What do they teach in school today?

From	"James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	comp.programming
Subject	Re: What do they teach in school today?
Date	2015-09-05 23:17 +0100
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<msfpi9$dgg$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	<MPG.30401c0c36885213989ac3@news.eternal-september.org><msfioj$i8c$1@dont-email.me> <87io7obkht.fsf@ixod.org>

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"Mark Carroll" <mtbc@bcs.org> wrote in message 
news:87io7obkht.fsf@ixod.org...
> "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> writes:
> (snip)
>> From things I have seen on TV recently it seems that when educators 
>> do
>> teach kids to program it is using things like Scratch which allows
>> programs to be composed by dragging constructs and dropping them in a
>> gui. There's an example of it at
>>
>>   https://scratch.mit.edu/
>>
>> I can see some value in it for tiny tots perhaps but, otherwise,
>> aargh!
>
> My son's in secondary school in Perth, Scotland. Everybody did Scratch
> and Build Your Own Blocks. He chose to continue with computing, and is
> thus now on VisualBasic and will be doing Java at some point. How
> typical that is I've no idea.

Do you mind my asking what age range they teach Scratch to? No need to 
reply if you'd rather not. I just wondered if it was at the start of 
Secondary School - age about 11 or 12, perhaps, or do they continue to 
get pupils to use it up to age 16? By "chose to" I presume you mean that 
he went on to VB at around 14 or 15 but perhaps not.

...

> They don't even
> put those nice Open University lectures on television in the early
> mornings any more

True, and before they stopped I remember the type of OU programme 
changing from arguably dull but interesting because of being detailed 
and informative to jazzy and slick but bland and lacking info. It seemed 
to me that the programmes became more to motivate than to educate. Just 
my view.

> and if one looks at local night school courses it's
> all pottery and whatnot. In computing we're lucky that at least decent
> self-study books for practical programming can be bought and one
> typically doesn't need expensive resources to be able to work on them.

Books are available. Over the years I have bought scores of them. With 
some cheap second-hand gems (and without meaning to boast but just to 
relate) I have a personal library of computing books which is vastly 
better than any modern library I have been in.

...

> No Python books does sound pretty sorry. Even Perth has "Beginning
> Programming with Python for Dummies"

Well, that title speaks volumes (no pun intended) about the level of 
information library users are exposed to today.

> (albeit only one copy that is
> "awaiting shelving", not yet reservable) though no obvious O'Reilly.
> (I've not studied Python myself, mostly I bluff my way through it 
> based
> on what I know of OOP and Perl and Haskell.)

From memory, Python in a Nutshell by Alex Martelli is a good source of 
quick info if you already know how to program.

James

Thread

What do they teach in school today? "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2015-08-20 18:17 -0400
  Re: What do they teach in school today? Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2015-08-20 23:56 +0100
    Re: What do they teach in school today? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-08-20 16:10 -0700
  Re: What do they teach in school today? Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2015-08-20 23:55 +0000
    Re: What do they teach in school today? Julio Di Egidio <julio@diegidio.name> - 2015-08-24 04:28 -0700
  Re: What do they teach in school today? Leo <chris.w.l.macleod@sympatico.ca> - 2015-08-20 21:21 -0400
  Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-08-23 09:33 -0500
    Re: What do they teach in school today? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-08-23 09:47 -0700
      Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-08-23 14:45 -0500
    Re: What do they teach in school today? "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2015-08-23 23:27 -0400
      Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-08-24 09:48 -0500
        Re: What do they teach in school today? "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2015-08-25 00:49 -0400
          Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-08-25 09:58 -0500
            Re: What do they teach in school today? "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2015-08-28 19:30 -0400
            Re: What do they teach in school today? "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-05 20:49 +0100
              Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-09-11 00:26 -0500
                Re: What do they teach in school today? "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-12 10:58 +0100
                Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-09-12 08:06 -0500
                Re: What do they teach in school today? "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-12 15:20 +0100
                Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-09-13 00:53 -0500
                Re: What do they teach in school today? "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2015-09-13 12:19 -0400
                Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-09-14 00:32 -0500
                Re: What do they teach in school today? "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2015-09-14 07:17 -0400
                Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-09-14 09:29 -0500
                Re: What do they teach in school today? "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2015-09-12 13:11 -0400
          Re: What do they teach in school today? "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-05 20:55 +0100
            Re: What do they teach in school today? "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2015-09-07 20:20 -0400
              Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-09-11 00:44 -0500
                Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-09-11 08:29 -0500
                Re: What do they teach in school today? Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2015-09-11 17:05 +0100
                Re: What do they teach in school today? Mark Carroll <mtbc@bcs.org> - 2015-09-11 17:07 +0100
                Re: What do they teach in school today? Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2015-09-11 17:27 +0100
                Re: What do they teach in school today? "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2015-09-12 12:51 -0400
                Re: What do they teach in school today? "Charles Richmond" <numerist@aquaporin4.com> - 2015-09-11 14:55 -0500
                Re: What do they teach in school today? "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2015-09-12 12:54 -0400
                Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-09-11 17:52 -0500
                Re: What do they teach in school today? Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2015-09-12 00:23 +0100
                Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-09-11 22:45 -0500
                Re: What do they teach in school today? "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2015-09-12 12:56 -0400
                Re: What do they teach in school today? "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-12 11:04 +0100
                Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-09-12 08:10 -0500
                Re: What do they teach in school today? "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-12 15:24 +0100
                Re: What do they teach in school today? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2015-09-12 15:36 +0100
                Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-09-12 23:24 -0500
                Re: What do they teach in school today? Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2015-09-16 13:08 -0500
                Re: What do they teach in school today? Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2015-09-16 18:54 +0000
                Re: What do they teach in school today? Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2015-09-17 00:15 -0500
                Re: What do they teach in school today? Chad <cdalten@gmail.com> - 2015-09-25 21:08 -0700
                Re: What do they teach in school today? "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2015-09-12 12:49 -0400
                Re: What do they teach in school today? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2015-09-12 19:56 -0500
  Re: What do they teach in school today? "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-05 21:21 +0100
    Re: What do they teach in school today? Mark Carroll <mtbc@bcs.org> - 2015-09-05 22:54 +0100
      Re: What do they teach in school today? "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-05 23:17 +0100
        Re: What do they teach in school today? Mark Carroll <mtbc@bcs.org> - 2015-09-06 09:59 +0100
          Re: What do they teach in school today? "James Harris" <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2015-09-06 11:11 +0100
    Re: What do they teach in school today? "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2015-09-07 19:59 -0400
    Re: What do they teach in school today? "Charles Richmond" <numerist@aquaporin4.com> - 2015-09-11 14:59 -0500

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