There’s very little competent teaching of CS in high school, and very few teachers with CS degrees.
Most graduating high school students don’t really know what CS is, so choosing a CS major feels risky.
Most graduating high school students don’t really know what CS is, so choosing a CS major feels risky.
I think my junior class had legitimately 50% go straight on to become CSci majors. I was lucky and I feel lucky.
I get that that's a hot take for HN, but they need more time learning the basics of critical thinking, communication, and emotional intelligence before learning what the hell time and memory complexity are.
I think we should be teaching kids how to code but the science side of it can stay put in higher learning. We're terrible at teaching young adults it, let alone children.
Unfortunately I think it's about the same, not many teachers, let alone good ones.
They don’t need more time. They need a serious curriculum.
I don’t propose to require CS in high school but it’d be great if it was an high quality option for more people. Lots of people do AP math, and many of them could do well with CS as an alternative if it was available. Also, some other people who are better programmers than mathematicians (like me) would benefit from this option.
Sadly, the number of good CS grads that would choose to teach at high school will stay very small as long as other opportunities are so much more attractive.
I agree that a lot of college CS teaching is not very good, for similar reasons.
Ontop of this, the author is way too contractual about people's degree choices. He completely ignores various other factors:
- What career do I think I'd enjoy and be good at?
- What am I actually interested in learning about?
- What are my school, friends and parents recommending?
High schoolers should be taught how to cook, how to exercise, how to think for themselves, and basic history and math. Anything above that like Calculus is a huge waste of time if they don’t know how to fry a fucking egg.