[LINK] Let's pause before drinking the 'coding in schools' Kool-Aid

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

On 3/06/2015 7:37 PM, Brenda Aynsley wrote:

> So forgive those of us who promote 'coding in schools' and recognise
> what we are attempting to do perhaps clumsily but you might accept the
> validity of the reasons we are doing it.

The reasons are admirable but IMHO "computational thinking" is a 
simplistic objective and coding is not the route to that objective anyway.

I'm a professional engineer and the institutions to which I belong are 
promoting STEM education, which I believe is a much more useful approach 
than one based upon coding or IT, both of which tend to be narrow 
focused i.e. specific languages or popular/current vendor technologies. 
STEM subjects teach the fundamentals upon which today's and future 
products and services are built.

Education in the STEM fundamentals last a lifetime, and I speak from 
experience. My first, second and third degrees, finished in the early 
1970s, are still totally relevant today. The knowledge and expertise I 
acquired on such things as the 8088, 8086, 80286, 80386 etc 
microprocessors, IBM and Univac mainframes as well as associated 
technologies like BAL, Exec8, Wordperfect, TurboPascal, DBase IV etc are 
useless and irrelevant in today's technology environments.

The danger is that if coding is introduced into schools as proposed, 
politicians will pat themselves on the back and do no more, thinking 
that they have solved the problem. Getting coding into schools is a 
simple problem but It's the wrong problem. Encouraging, promoting and 
achieving higher levels of STEM education is both harder and more 
expensive, but it's the real problem. Solving it will bring real value, 
"Coding in schools" might help some politicians, but not much else.

-- 

Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn BEng, MEng, Phd, MIEEE, MIET, MACS, MIEAust
Sydney Australia
email: brd at iimetro.com.au
web:   www.drbrd.com
web:   www.problemsfirst.com
Blog:  www.problemsfirst.com/blog