UK government response to my letter about programming in schools

>adding an extra topic that will only be useful to a small number of people would be wasteful. //

Just as a comparison. In Wales, Welsh language is taught throughout school and in every lesson. Yet English language is understood and used by nearly everyone in Wales and Welsh language is used by less than 20% of people. In addition Wales is the only country where it has any significant use. Welsh language is taught as the most important subject.

Clearly UK curricula don't look at utility or life application as the most important aspects of subjects taught.

Yes, it's a bit of a bête noire for me.

>how much better do you think they would be able to do their job if they knew how to program //

A little? How much better can they do their job if they know how to do algebra, or order a sandwich in France?

I'm not sure I agree with jgrahamc but I'm not sure I'm with you either ...

How many would benefit from learning more physics, microbiology, or reading more Shakspeare? I would say it is about the same.

For example a specific example from the article is Excel. I might not like and would never use it personally but it is useful to teach it to kids. They can just use it to track their personal finances to start with. A lot of businesses use it. Knowing how to automate things in can be a great timesaver. Heck, just knowing that it is possible to automate things in it using scripting would be good to know.

There is game programming, and that can be used to attract kids to go and study programming in depth. I think we would benefit as a society from kids wanting to go into CS more than wanting to go into Communications or English majors. Then there is the whole web aspect of it.

Then just basic literacy of using the web & the privacy implications are very important to know. Network privacy and security is one of those things along law, personal finance & propaganda techniques that should be taught first and foremost in schools because those are probably going to be important in anyone's lives -- more so than ancient history or even learning Visual Basic programming. But it seems important & practical subjects like that are excluded from our (American) education system, not sure about the British one...

Learning programming can be easily misconstrued. Lets call it logic, algorithms and applied maths. Now is it a good idea? Sure, and its something a hypothetical cruise director could actually use.

Programming, at its base, is really a method for understanding and defining a process. It's about breaking a big task down into its component pieces. It's about turning one large, nearly intractable problem into a series of easily understood and fundamentally soluable problems.

If programming is taught in this context, with an emphasis on methods for problem-solving in general rather than language syntax in particular, its utility in the everyday life of the average person becomes a lot more obvious. I used simple programming as a part of a worker re-education program that included basic literacy and numeracy, and it proved to be very effective in the overall success of the students -- even with no expectation that programming would play a part in their later lives. It made other things easier for them to do, and if that's the only value that the "average" student gets out of a programming course, it seems like enough, doesn't it?

We need more people to understand programming from a young age so they can intuitively understand and more effectively use their devices' capabilities, and also so there are more people in more fields equipped to identify + communicate positions where software could provide automation or assistance.

Add to this that programming can really help kids develop their problem solving abilities AND their creativity, and that it can be done in a fun way, and I would argue that the introduction of programming could be very beneficial to the development of kids.

A computer is a very powerful tool that is available to pretty much everybody in the developed world. Computer literacy translates into a workforce that is able to compete internationally from a position of strength rather than weakness. Think about the industrial age, one group gets to use all the powertools, the other work with their hands and hand tools, which do you think is more productive and will result in a stronger nation economically?

Programming need not be taught for its own sake. It could be an enabler together with maths. A tool for exploring concepts. A lot of maths is difficult because it is so far from everyday concepts. So it takes a great deal of effort to supply the materials needed to build the supporting mental models. von Nuemann said "In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them". One way is to drill lots of problems but this is boring and only a few people are disciplined enough to do it. Another way is to program the concept (all the maths an average person needs is finite, algorithmic and constructive), explore lots of variations, improve intuition, give a basis of attachment to motivate short quick drills to be able to then improve the model.

The power of programming is that it gives you a way to concretize abstract concepts in a virtual setting. Lessening the distance, hence making it more approachable. I have only a little doubt that I can teach a random 10 year old the basics of special relativity up to accounting for acceleration, using programming. And I am certain they would be able to learn Bayesian probability by playing with a programmable model designed to teach it.

There is also the added benefit of strengthened analytical thinking. You cannot know how a simple scripting knowledge can help a person without being them. My suspicion is it would help most people in some way. But no one can make use of something whose existence they are unaware of.

Education is -- or should be -- about drawing out a learner's latent talents so they can achieve their full potential. It shouldn't merely be a narrow, Gradgrindian, process aimed solely at turning someone into an obedient wage-slave for corporations.

I think learning programming can help someone achieve their full potential in three ways:

1. programming forces someone to think very clearly and logically about a problem. This is a very useful skill, even if you never write code ever again.

2. introducing someone to programming helps them to understand computers. We are rapidly becoming a society where computers are ubiquitous, so thins will be important to them throughout their lives -- as an individual using technology, as a citizen, as a voter, as a parent, and yes, as an employee.

3. an introduction to programming will inspire some people to take it further, as a career or as a hobby.

This is a false dichotomy. In High School I took classes on Weightlifting (twice), Drama, Art, French 1, Spanish 1, and was a teacher's assistant twice (what a waste that was...). There were also classes available in tractor repair, farming, ROTC, track and field, etc. Our high school was able to fit more classes in than other schools because each year was split into fall and spring with 4 classes each half.

Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that there's room for more and for modification. Also how about tying math into programming? Or combining reading/writing/language in beneficial ways, etc.

> If you took a random person you passed on a busy London street at lunch time, how much better do you think they would be able to do their job if they knew how to program?

A while back I was in a meeting being given a presentation that had previously been given to the CEO of our company (they were giving it to us to keep us up to date). In it, there was a quite obvious problem with the numbers where the reported percentage increase was nowhere near what the numbers suggested. I raised my hand to point it out and was mildly surprised when the manager giving the presentation told me that he didn't want to report numbers that were too high. I decided not to point out that mathematics doesn't care about what he wants to report.

So anyway, this guy who is paid lots of money at a reasonably sized company doesn't even have a passing knowledge of statistics, something that every school child was supposed to learn. Would he have been better able to do his job if he knew math? Probably. But he doesn't know math. All those years in school didn't really rub off on him.

In any case, if you were to ask how many people use literary analysis, math, art, history or science in their work the answer is going to be close to zero. It's true that lots of people write as part of their job, but most people write poorly and most writing classes focus on analyzing Shakespeare, not writing reports on employee efficiency.

Another argument for programming in schools is the same as the argument for literature in schools. Even if you never need to program in the real world being able to program implies that you have certain cognitive and logical abilities that many jobs require. For example, it is important to be logical if you are a lawyer, even though you needn't program.

I would not be prepared to dismiss coding out of hand because not many people are programmers. I bet it is more pertinent then most of the things I learned in high school.

From a point of view of the sort of people who in fact would read the letter, you might be right.

But from the point of view of the ideal recipient of the letter -- someone who cares about computing education -- giving examples of relevant projects is the right thing to do, because examples help to get the point across. Unfortunately politicians don't get computers or the internet, which is why we need new ones who do.

Next May, Pirate Party UK will contest elections across the country; I myself intend to stand as a candidate for Edinburgh Council. We're hoping to duplicate our recent success in Berlin across the UK.

If Pirates are elected and we receive similar letters about computing education, we won't simply ignore them, we'll act on them.

However the net result of this is that, to take an example, school IT services range from the sublime to the dire. Almost all of them are hugely expensive contracts to major firms (say, BT) and tend to consist of poorly paid tech staff (often shared amongst a school district), old out-dated technology and overly-complex infrastructure.

At my mum's school, a primary, the teachers had 3 "new" laptops each one year, because they could not get the infrastructure right...

This is mirrored across the whole system; no one has a proper budget or equipment recommendations from the DOE. And as a result you get a hit-and-miss situation, with some schools well equipped and others a mess.

More often than not teachers will spend out of their own pocket just to be able to adequately teach a subject.

Mandating every aspect of education would be bad, I agree. But affirmative action to end the waste, provide support for equipment purchase etc. would be very welcome!

Aah, glory days ;-)

They taught us the basics of programming, and that was about it. But it was enough to light the flame and I've been passionate about it ever since.

It's okay for people to be bad at some things, or even not care about them. Schools should spend more time introducing arts and skills to students. Let the students decide what they want to study beyond the basics that everyone needs to know.

"Be it with Raspberry Pi computers in schools, or with some other hardware, we need to get back on top."

Rasberry Pi was just a suggestion. The broader idea of "teaching programming" was ignored.

The department does set the curriculum; which means they legislate on what subjects should be taught, what topics within that subject should be taught etc.

John's argument is that programming should be added to the earlier curriculum - they seem to have missed that point, but it is not something that a local authority could implement even if contacted.

A response from them at all means that someone took enough time to count your statistic for/against such a topic. That's a stronger position then yelling at the TV hoping they'll hear you.

I have a particular problem with it: the response to "this subject ought to be included in the curriculum" was "we aren't the ones to make that change, all we do is decide what's in the curriculum."

I never intended this letter to be public, it was written as a letter to Gove. I made it public because I thought the reply was so sad.

I do love the final comment, asking for a personal meeting with a secretary of state based on a quick e-mail, though

You don't get what you don't ask for.

The current government plan to take this even further by allowing private companies to run state school for profit. Thus further incentivising cheating, manipulation of test results, pushing students into easy subjects, teaching to tests, not allowing entry to students who won't perform well, not allowing students to sit tests if they might not get top marks, underfunding of 'hard' subjects and so on. Parent's power to actually complain about a school is reduced as well: schools will no longer be run by democratically elected local authorities, but by the largely unelected board of governors. If you have a complaint they won't deal with (most schools won't even tell you the names of the governors), you have to go directly to the secretary of state and, as this submission demonstrates, getting an answer from Mr Gove is very difficult (no doubt you would be fobbed off with a "we don't interfere with the running of individual schools" response).