How would you feel if basic level programming skills were taught in elementary school? Would kids not be up to par with what programming demands, brain capacity wise? Would it help the kids with maths and other similar classes, or even be worth it for kids who have no interest in the field.
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I think that, for the most part, they are already taught many of those skills in disguise. Interestingly, cooking/baking has some pretty solid parallels with programming:
Things of that nature serve many purposes: They teach real-life skills, they teach programming, math, natural language, co-operation and lots of other skills. Pure programming at that age might be too abstract for a young mind to really wrangle it. Lots of kids have problems with the abstract nature of algrebra/variables as it is. I think adding something as abstract as programming would compound those issues. edit The bonus is: when it's over, there's cookies. |
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Kids differ in interests. But elementary schools in the past have had some success with stuff like Apple II's (or BBC equivalent, et.al.) with Basic or Logo. Some kids take to programming with easy robotics stuff such as Lego Mindstorms. Helps to have the programming result in a completely non-abstract result, such as producing fart sounds, and other fun stuff. |
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While pre-teens might be a bit wrong to be introducing them to computer theory, program design, and patterns, I don't see a problem with given kids some simple programming exercises. I was about 7 or 8 when I started mucking about with basic on a ZX Spectrum, and the schools I went to all had BBC or Acorn computers (British teaching computers part-funded by the BBC). Kids will probably pick up a lot of the functional side of programming pretty quickly, and then when they're a bit older you can start introducing patterns and object-oriented design. |
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According to psychological research, our ability to engage in formal abstract thought is acquired in puberty. Programming uses formal abstract thought very heavily, and therefore it would not be appropriate to try to teach a lot of programming until adolescence. That said, people both can and have successfully taught programming to much younger children. Examples of programming languages that were developed for this purpose include Smalltalk and Logo. However a lot of what we consider important about good programming and debugging technique has to wait for the students to develop the necessary maturity to learn it. |
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