Should we teach IT or programming?

[tractorman]

According to our esteemed Minister of Education (and other things), IT should not be taught and, instead of playing games, children should be writing them.

IT was taught in both of the schools I worked in - badly in one (but suddenly it is a specialist Maths/IT school and they have a new head of IT) and well in the other (already a specialist Maths/IT and are very hot on teacher training and appraisal). However, both schools had more than a few pupils who had no idea of how to save a Word document, let alone anything slightly more complex!

As far as the consultation goes, it looks like "Industry" and Universities are to be considered - but I suspect that, as usual, small firms won't be included. So, Unis will suggest that Pascal and C is taught, Industry will ask for Visual Basic (because the IT people aren't asked what is used!) and we will have a whole load of very bored kids who can't understand logic and will switch off.

The second school I worked at had a "Control" module in D&T, where the pupils used a simple visual language to program PICs. The didn't understand, weren't interested and wasted the opportunity to work up to making "robots" move about. If the child isn't interested in something that actually does something, what chance have the teachers got in interesting them in something that only produces "Hello" on a monitor?

A friend has two sons, both were IT mad as children and they now both work in IT. One is a security expert (and married to a well respected consultant in security) and the other a programmer. The first lives in California, the second works for a firm his father helped set up in the Bahamas (I think - certainly not the UK!).

Me? I went to Uni as a mature student and graduated (Instrument and Control) in 1995. I learnt Basic, Forth, Pascal and various assembly languages at college and Uni - and a little C++ afterwards. I've never used any of them professionally; but I must learn something in order to control my model railway - as I have been saying for about twenty years!

[TerryG]

Basic computer skills should definitely be taught in school. How else are parents ever going to learn how to use their computers . Programming should not ne inflicted on anybody but should definitely be offered as an option. C is the most useful language, Visual Basic is not programming, it's scripting. It is very useful but knowing C will give you more options.
In the office we are having difficulty finding SQL experts at the moment. We have 2 C people that are superb and 2 VB guys (who write the automation stuff for office (ie they record macros for a living)) We have tried 3 supposed SQL experts so far and they have all known less about it than I do (which isn't very much).
When I was at school GCSE IT consisted of learning how to change the line spacing in word and layout presentations in PowerPoint. It is basic stuff like that our work experience students are missing. I did a computing A-Level and that covered visual basic, databases and some other stuff I have forgotten.

Politicians should be asking employers (from your local corner shop - international banks) what skills they require from candidate and adjust the syllabus to reflect that rather than thinking "how can we change the system so we get a 100% pass rate"

[OneCarefulOwner]

I learned BBC Basic at school - well, I say at school; I learned it at home on my BBC, and tormented the useless teacher regarding her lack of knowledge,

It's done me precisely no good as an adult, as programming languages have moved on considerably & I've never even tried keeping up to date with them. Overarching IT skills are far more useful than specific details like programming.

[Mitsuru]

I will say this for those of you who haven't gone down the teaching degree path.
In The degree course that I participated in but didn't complete due to iff health
(and I tried many times to complete it)

Control technology, programming and computer interface design are part of the
teaching qualification as these are part of curriculum and it is down to how the to
either the head of that department or the head of the school to change the way
the classes are organised.

I do know that was the case 5+ years ago as far as the teaching qualification goes
and that was for those going into teaching from scratch.
So as far the politicians go for having a go at the way the pupils are taught,
perhaps if they had to deal with all the sh*t they forced on the teachers plus
actually trying to teach them they would be keeping their F**king gobs shut!!
And maybe even remove some of the stuff they have to deal with!!

I speak from experience as I was training to be a fully qualified ICT/IT teacher for a
secondary school.

[jimmyybob]

ctrl+alt+del that's all IT professionals do anyway. How many times have you phoned 'IT support' to be told..errr yeh mate turn it off and on again.!

[TerryG]

Our helpdesk is under instructions to tell all users to restart their PC and try again before spending any time trying to resolve a fault. It is so much more time efficient than fixing whatever program is misbehaving (it does annoy users from time to time. You would have thought they would learn to do it themselves!)

[tractorman]

I suspect Control, programming and IT are part of the course if you want to be an IT or DT(electronics) teacher, but not necessarily if you want to teach DT (Resistant Materials/Textiles etc) or other subjects like English, French etc.

As I said, the last school I worked in is a "Teaching and Learning" school - they train teachers with the local Uni (not only on placement!) and we had a number working in the DT department (some good, some not quite so good!) that didn't know a lot about control or programming! They appointed an NQT from outside the area about four years ago, he was a trained mechanical engineer and had to do RM for his degree, didn't do Control or IT-type subjects! He had real problems trying to teach control to year nine pupils!

I once worked on a Helpdesk for a major employer in our area (I had to sign the Official Secrets Act) and, after three months I was burned out! You can only say "Have you tried switching it off?" so many times! Resetting passwords was the main Monday job!!

One thing that always concerns me with these "bright ideas" is that the people don't realise that the less able will be wasting their time trying to learn what is quite a difficult subject. I can think of a number of pupils who had to take eight or ten GCSEs that should have been taught fewer subjects at a slower speed and lower level. Instead of a wad of "U" grades, they may have got two or three "C" or above, which would have been much more useful to them.

I write as someone who only got two 'O' levels and was treated like an idiot at school. It was seventeen years later that I had enough self-confidence to go on a retraining course (for electronics!), be told I was actually quite bright, and continue, via GCSE and Tech College and on to degree level!

[Martin Evans]

It needs to be taught but beyond school level, I think there is a need for apprenticeship type training, for the real world (Both in software and hardware fields). At present, we seem to be stuck with either academics or flow chart fools.

[Maaarrghk]

At skool/polytechnic in the early 80's I was taught Basic and another more engineering orientated language, both of which I have never used. The Basic was part of a Computer Studies O-level, done when computers were the size of portaloos and slightly less use. At Poly, the first CAD systems were coming out, but needed to be housed in climate controlled buildings.

Of much greater use was the European Computer Driving License that I did about 10 years ago. This taught me what I needed to know about using a computer in an office enviroment. I would suggest that this is all that most of us need and that any education in programming might best be optional as an O-level or whatever it is they do at skool these days.

Around the same time I did a G&G in AutoCAD, and these 2 qualifications have been all that I have needed so far.

[Mrotwoman]

10 PRINT "ARSE"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

It's served me well throughout my life