Tory Boss of Government Coding Education Initiative Can't Code
politicalscrapbook.net
politicalscrapbook.net
- "I'm going to put my cards on the table, Jeremy, I can't code.
I've committed this year to learning to code, hopefully."
- "Take a year?"
- "Well, you can do very little in a very short space of time."
- "Code is the language you use to instruct computers"
And by lack of interest, I mean for example the picture on the header.
[ ] Can write code
[ ] Can explain what it is
[x] Is a Tory
[x] Worked for Iain Duncan Smith's think tank
But I don't think the image was trying to make her seem disinterested, I think it was trying to make her seem unqualified. The person in that job should be interested AND qualified, not interested and politically connected.
'Disinterested' does mean "having or feeling no interest in something," but only in the original sense of 'interest,' meaning a stake or investment, and a preference for a certain outcome. In that, it really means 'objective.'
'Uninterested' means 'not interested.'
Super-common mistake, made by native English speakers at least 100M times a day.
[x] sending e-mails
[x] receiving e-mails
[x] deleting e-mails...
I'm sure this person would never claim that someone who can't play the violin could teach someone to play violin. I don't understand why she thinks coding is any different.
Also, I found myself getting annoyed at the "building a static website in an hour" == "coding" = "building Facebook" mentality. It takes more than an hour to learn how to actually write a simple program, and even more to learn to build a nontrivial web application.
Then again, I got started with static web dev and ended up becoming a CS major, so maybe that's an optimistic and accessible way to frame it for beginners.
Here is an MP on Question Time saying all the things I want to say on Question Time. Coding is a vital skill that our education system is ignoring. Children that grow up without any idea of how computers work will be disadvantaged. An economy that has no young work force even introduced to coding will not be digitally productive.
When I'm trying to sell the "teach children to code" course that I occasionally run I like to use this metaphor: people that don't know how computers work to even the most basic level aren't people that don't know how an internal combustion engine works. They're people that only know how to get taxis.
So don't hate on this woman (even if she is Tory, even if she does know powerful people) because she's standing in our corner fighting our fight.
10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10
10 PRINT "IM A COMPUTER"
20 GOTO 10
The next 30 years have just been variations on a theme. Spawned Erlang processes, in my head, are 20 GOTO 10.
edit: The thing that freaks me out about computer illiterate people being in charge of teaching people computing is that they aren't equipped to choose the experts to hire. She can only evaluate them by their connections, their pleasantness, their respect from peers (who also can't be evaluated), and their massive marketing budgets.
print "Hello world!"
print "Hello World!"
10 INPUT "Name",N$
20 FOR X=1 to 10
30 PRINT N$;" is an idiot"
40 NEXT
Or v0.0.0.1 of http://foaas.com/ ...
It might have been a clumsy performance, but there's a serious need to address the current under-qualification of teachers to teach programming in schools so we should be glad someone, somewhere has found financial and political backing to tackle it.
If she wants to really have an effect on education and the digital skills we'll need children to grow up with she should be treating the subject of coding as a serious topic that deserves respect, time and a great deal of support from government and industry alike.
As stated elsewhere,
10 print "Hello!" 20 goto 10
Then just variations on that theme, lookup other functions etc.
We don't need schools to teach programming either. Anyone who is interested in it can learn it themselves easily.
My son just made his decisions for GCSE options. He decided against doing IT, because they just play around with spreadsheets. He's learning to code at home, by himself, writing games and apps for his phone. That's the way to do it IMHO...
At school, you're going to be in a class where 50% couldn't care less about programming, and the rest will just slow you down. Self teaching is much better.
So what? That's not the point, of course you can become strongly interested in something in a short space of time. The problem is you really can't learn to code in that time.
> Then just variations on that theme, lookup other functions etc.
This statement is so broad as to be meaningless. Would you say you know quantum mechanics just because someone wrote down a few axioms for you and the rest is 'just' busywork and maths?
> At school, you're going to be in a class where 50% couldn't care less about programming, and the rest will just slow you down. Self teaching is much better.
If the self teaching environment is available and good, of course it is. However, there's nothing special about computing here, and one reason we have schools in the first place is that the environment is not always otherwise available.
What is more important than teaching people to program, is showing them how to teach themselves.
Programming doesn't really have any big concepts that need massive amounts of prior knowledge to understand. It's just 1s and 0s. You can't really compare programming (Building stuff), to quantum mechanics.
I'd say pretty much all kids these days have access to a computer, and to the internet - a perfect environment for self teaching.
Just like 25 years ago when I was teaching myself, there is no barrier to anyone who wants to learn.
The initial realisation that everything is just simple conditionals and loops is very empowering, and will probably lead to a burst of creativity in many people. However, the reality is that these tools are not sufficient for many complex tasks, and left to their own devices, students may lose interest before discovering the alternatives.
Having a teacher there to say "This might be easier if you learn about arrays" is very valuable.
Variables, loops, branches, I/O (input/print). Did I miss anything?
Learning programming at its rawest form, is giving someone a list of assembly code instructions, explaining what they all do, and saying "go build stuff". And it's fairly simple to learn. It can certainly be explained in a day.
Just like painting - give someone a pencil and paper and say "go make something".
His school also allows you to opt out entirely from foreign languages, which he has done, which is a good move IMHO.
I hated having to do French or German 20 years ago...
Oh dear.
I do think there is actually a need for a political party whose MP's are actually made up on members of the professions they'll eventually represent (By which I mean they won't represent the actual industry, but the people, but you would have a minister of education who has actual practice of being a teacher or something).
Or how it would 'only take a day' to learn how to operate on people, for that matter.
I'm not so much surprised that someone in her position doesn't know how to code (she doesnt't have to, really), but at the very least I expect you to have a basic understanding of the depth and breadth of the topic, and not make sweeping, distracting and confusing statements like this.
A little preparation, just a few hours of talking to people who are knowledgeable on the topic, would go a long way not making a fool out of yourself.
...Nor does he lack even a layperson's grasp of what surgery is.
I feel rather sorry for her, though - aren't politicians supposed to be briefed for public appearances nowadays so things like this Just Don't Happen?
Also, the idea that civil servants are appointed based on "ability to do the job" is, for lack of a better term, amusing.
NB The UK Civil Service is precisely the kind of organization that I suspect Michael Young had in mind when he coined the much-abused term "meritocracy":
When the NHS was first being proposed the doctors at the time were strongly against it. The Health Secretary (Bevan I think) just flat refused to listen to what the doctors were telling him. He told them that it didn't matter what their complaints were, he was going to start a national health service.
If we had a system where you had to be an expert in a field before you could be in government then we would lose things like this. We would also lose problems with idiots running things (cough Gove cough). Overall though, we would never have change, our elected officials would only ever vote to maintain the status quo.
Additionally, we vote for people to represent us in government, I don't know that doctors could ever truly represent my views on health care.
I would just like to add a note that none of the things that I've represented as facts above have been checked. I learnt them in the pub, they might be wrong. Let me know (nicely).
On the "appointed day", 5 July 1948, having overcome political opposition from both the Conservative Party and from within his own party, and after a dramatic showdown with the British Medical Association, which had threatened to derail the National Health Service scheme before it had even begun, as medical practitioners continued to withhold their support just months before the launch of the service, Bevan's National Health Service Act of 1946 came into force. After 18 months of ongoing dispute between the Ministry of Health and the BMA, Bevan finally managed to win over the support of the vast majority of the medical profession by offering a couple of minor concessions, but without compromising on the fundamental principles of his NHS proposals. Bevan later gave the famous quote that, in order to broker the deal, he had "stuffed their mouths with gold".
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1194059/A-giant-ma...
I need to have a beer with this guy.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Live-Downing-Street-Nick-Robinson/dp...
Personally, I think this country is long overdue a Attlee, Bevan or even a Thatcher - leaders who actually believed in something.
Its more that she doesn't even know what a surgeon does but thinks you can train a surgeon up in a day.
I'd be far happier if the technically minded politicians were those holding schemes like this to account rather than running them. Running a scheme like this involves lots of skills, none of them technical. She isn't writing the curriculum, she's navigating it through the corridors of power and dealing with all the vested interests for and against it.
Yes, but she doesn't seem to know what "it" is.
In terms of the government placing people sympathetic to it's agenda in wider society, the role you talk about (the Oftsted role) isn't meant to be a political role. The head of Ofsted is answerable to whatever party is in power but isn't part of the government in a party political way.
If you don't do that you end up changing large swathes of the government every five years or more (it's not like governments don't change tack mid parliament) which isn't in anyone's interest. These roles should be on competence rather than political vision.
Someone in the corridors of power might ask her what the scheme costs, what the staffing requirements are or why employers can't teach those skills on the job if it takes just a day.
While I agree that this statement is correct, I would suggest that one skill that is required is the ability to use Google. She really should spend a few hours learning something, anything, about the subject matter she is expected to represent in the corridors of power. She obviously has failed to do that.
> "In my perspective ... science and computer science is a liberal art, it's something everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their life. It's not something that should be relegated to 5 percent of the population over in the corner. It's something that everybody should be exposed to and everyone should have mastery of to some extent, and that's how we viewed computation and these computation devices."
Woz:
http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-never-wrote-comput...
> Steve didn't ever code. He wasn't an engineer and he didn't do any original design, but he was technical enough to alter and change and add to other designs. I did all of the Apple I and Apple ][ myself, including the feature choices. I did all of the BASIC myself (it's in handwriting as I couldn't afford an assembler). The only person who helped write some of the Apple ][ code was Allen Baum, who helped with the 'monitor' program.
By the time these kids are old enough to gets jobs (so in some cases in 10+ years) technology will be even more prevalent in the work place than it is now and it will penetrate every sector.
If kids start learning to code and making things with computers (whether it's apps, websites, programming Lego or robots) then they will become more familiar and comfortable with technology and whilst being able to write a bit of JavaScript may not directly help you get the dream job as a doctor, but being able to sit down in front of a new computer system or patient care device and very quickly learn you way around is a huge benefit to employers - and that will stem because they're going to have 10 years of being exposed to different devices, UI paradigms and OSs.
In terms of the code it will hopefully teach the kids some maths skills, language skills (in terms of learning about syntactical structure and expressing your instructions), and also learning to fail (which we still see as a huge negative here in the UK). Of course there are many other benefits and skills they will pick up too.
A final thing that pisses me off is this "year of code" aspect, it shouldn't be just one year, it should be tens years of code; the Government should be shouting about how enriched today's 6 years olds will be when they finally leave school to work because of a decade of exposure to technology.
</rage>
I honestly don't expect the compulsory school system to enact anything nearly as elaborate as that.
The "learn to code" hysteria is just a desperation move to try and bring back some legitimacy to an already highly ravaged public school system. At best, the course will be something like a JavaSchool.
I still find it aggravating that people are for teaching kids to code without learning system administration first. Knows how to write C# scripts, but can't use vi to edit a configuration file.
Most of the current generation of software engineers taught themselves in the beginning. Or, at least, had enough curiosity and initiative to investigate on their own volition and/or put themselves in knowledge's way (e.g., set themselves up for computer science degrees, etc.) Consultants however are invariably from the world of social engineering, where they get by and succeed through excessive self-confidence and, if you're lucky, they may have picked up a technical anecdote here-or-there.
I certainly agree with the sentiment of teaching/introducing proper computer science and/or software engineering to kids, but I can't help but feel that, as a government project, it'll be botched by the lowest bidder or brownest nose.
I must say that I am quite impressed by her and her attitude.
They all got their gobs through connections not merit. It's like a general who never fraught a war or ever even went through the training.
It's great to include it in the curriculum but I'm sure everyone on here realises that not every child will want to learn it or have the mental aptitude to learn it, but it should lead to more people understanding (it at least on some level).
I still remember the feeling of almost-elation at seeing it in a browser, too. That might not mean much to you or anybody else, but to someone learning it can be an enormous leap.
(1) Put aside the semantics argument for the moment.
If your skill as a programmer were dependent on the skill of your teacher as a programmer, then we wouldn't be anywhere. If your skill in anything were dependent on how good your teachers were at the skill itself, rather than at the skill of teaching, then we would really be a lost society.
I don't think I had a single teacher in high school or a professor in college that was a better programmer than me, and half of my professors probably couldn't code beyond the old linked list example they were putting up on the projector every semester. They didn't teach me how to program. They taught me how to reason about software.
But that isn't the point. As far as I'm concerned, the act of programming is unteachable. The physical act of typing characters in a text editor, running tests on it, and changing some characters with new characters, is all you can teach, but the mental leaps of figuring out which are the right characters and tests and changes for the failing tests takes a lifetime of experience and practice.
But that doesn't mean there isn't a role that a teacher can play to instruct students during that personal experience. Otherwise, what is the point of art teachers? It's the same thing, you can't really teach someone to make good art. You can teach them the mechanics of holding a brush and putting paint on a canvas, or taking photos, or writing. I've seen dozens of kids spend small fortunes on art educations at Ivy League schools and they still aren't artists. Because you can't teach them how to make something have meaning.
And I knew dozens of kids in my own computer science program who spent the equivalent of a luxury car on a software development education and they still aren't software developers. Few of us stayed in the field, post-graduation, and fewer still are any good at it.
The only problem I can foresee with the "Learn To Code" movement is not "not everyone can learn to code." It's that, having the ability to write text in a text editor and run a compiler against it, is going to give everyone opinions on what software development should be, but they will have no experience, no knowledge of what distinguishes software development from programming. I can see it reinforcing the asshole manager view "it's just pushing buttons on a keyboard, what is so hard?" Because "pushing buttons on a keyboard" is all they are going to teach.
It would be as if we replaced our art classes with paint-by-number sessions.
But, on the other hand, we do force people through art museums and art appreciation classes and they don't seem to try to tell artists what creating art should be. Or, at least, not more often than busy-bodies in general try to tell everyone what to do.
If we could only get rid of the busy-bodies.
What I will say is that an expectation to be able to program is not something I would expect from a career politician. I would expect them to listen to advice from those that can.
(edit) OK I went and read the article. I take it all back. If you are given a job, you should at least have a basic understanding of what is involved. :(
Would be more than happy to put myself forward. (@AdamJBall)
- Computer Science grad - Launching a tech startup to help connect businesses and student coders (@CodingCupboard) - Passionate about solving youth unemployment - No political affiliation - All round nice guy
Disqualified right there. If you don't care about politics, why should you get appointed to a political office?