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Comment by matherial | Hacker News Reader

I think it's the same story as with Snap Circuits for learning electronics, or baking soda + citric acid "chemistry sets". Many parents really wanted their kids to have a STEM career, and so we lowered the bar to the point where STEM-shaped educational activities are accessible to any kid. But because there's no bar to entry, playing with these toys doesn't reliably translate into motivation to really learn electronics, programming, or something like that. That motivation still manifests only in a small percentage of kids. Maybe we're making that percentage go up slightly, but it's a small effect.

FWIW, it's not exactly a new phenomenon. Two decades before Scratch, many schools were using Logo to teach kids programming, probably with similar success rates. Stuff like that is probably good even if it doesn't lead to a STEM "success story". It makes kids actively participate instead of scrolling Tiktok all day.

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You have to have a certain grit to really succeed in STEM. The key lie of the kits is that... it's not easy. If having things be easy is your thing, then this is not something you want to do. And I don't mean 'easy' by 'not requiring work'. There are many easy things that are themselves lucrative careers because they require work that people don't want to do / aren't good at. STEM is 'hard' in the sense that there's not always an obvious next step. For example, right now, I have started a side business developing property. That's its own adventure, completely the opposite of STEM in many ways... the way forward is always pretty obvious. There's no random 'bug' or 'error' that happens without explanation. The difficulty in that field is simply execution. STEM is not like that. You can be a great executor, but if you don't know what to work on, then there's no point. Not sure if I'm doing a good job explaining the difference, but it's how I view it.

That being said, I use scratch to teach my kids programming. While computers are only a small piece of STEM, I think the zero marginal cost nature of it which allows unbounded trial and error is an amazing learning tool.

>That motivation still manifests only in a small percentage of kids. Maybe we're making that percentage go up slightly, but it's a small effect.

Yeah its not exactly predictable.

I know very few people in my high school who even attempted technology careers, and all of them from my year who tried, other than myself and one other, went in with scholarships. And all of them, left when the scholarship money ended. Its literally the 2 of us out of 6, and we are the 2 who werent funded by scholarships.

And one of the blokes who bailed was consistently turning in better quality coding assignments, and also had access to a pre uni IT pathway, and was studying for it. He just got bored and wandered off when no one wanted to finance it anymore (and this is australia, where full time students of that age are already eligible for money)

My impression of Australia (as an American who is living in New Zealand) is that there isn't the same financial benefit to working as a software engineer vs other careers as there is in the US, and there isn't the same stigma towards the trades.

We very almost followed the UK into a trade armageddon, sending all our kids to do tertiary subjects. But somehow we sort of lucked out of it. Tradespeople ended up being extremely well awarded anyway. Electricians especially do really well.

But yeah we push out a lot of engineers, just mostly Mining, Electrical, Structural. Much fewer software engineers.

I was inspired to learn programming when I first saw Logo on my school computer in the 80s. Till then I thought computers were something that only offices had and grown ups used. Not sure how any of this can be measured at scale but I'm sure some nontrivial % of students got into computers at an early age thanks to these tools.

All it takes is for someone who knows how to make regular tech bend down and say "this is for me." not to dumb it down beyond recognition.

Logo was a Programming Language, not a blunt-edged primary-colored disposable plastic blinkenlight.

Snap Circuits are just ingredients - or a way to develop fine motor skills with something that is entertaining for a parent.

You wire them up to something else then blow their mind by programming an ESP32 to be a switch with a touchscreen.

If the parent knows electronics, that's already a pretty good predictor that the kid will learn it too. But in the absence of that, the kit itself doesn't teach much. The instructions don't really explain the circuits, they just show you how to put together colorful blocks.

If the kid lacks curiosity that’s not something a kit can fix.

“Why??!” doesn’t come in a bottle, and that’s the X factor here.

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