cs ed

[arisrabkin]

I am apparently signed up to write a few-thousand-word research paper for the American Enterprise Institute about CS education. I am a bit unsure about the details of what I want to say, and would welcome thoughts. The goal is to produce "applied research" -- there should be novel claims backed by evidence, that are relevant to active policy

Comments

[deliriumsama]

I'm old enough that my "computer courses" looked like "here's how you use a mouse" and "here's how you use a search engine". Also "here's how to type" which was, at least, actually on a computer, not a typewriter.

My Jr. High computer class was just one semester, and I remember our teacher introducing us to a paint program and letting us build a story in it; basically really rudimentary point-and-click-adventure games. I think it was the first time I heard "If/Then Statement" used as a specific name for a specific thing.

I also think that if we never teach any subject like we teach math ever again, we'll be doing ourselves a favor. 95% of people will benefit more from the course that teaches them how to use programming in their lives than from a course that teaches them a bunch of abstract concepts.

[lepid0ptera]

From this generation you're probably mostly going to get people that had high school level programming like an AP class or something (Andrew is the only person I know that had that though

[notadoor]

I took no comp sci classes in K-12 (I think we had a typing class, which was useless and frustrating to me because I already had an atypical typing pattern that netted me 70+ wpm).

I was on one of the Lego robotics teams in middle school, but the way those tended to work is the boys who already knew a little bit about programming took over everything and the girls just kind of sat there and didn't do much.

[avani]

I have opinions on this. Happy to chat about it.