Both in the United States and around the world there is an increasing information gap between those who affect our technological advances and those who rely them. In order to avoid complete reliance on technology, I would like to see computer science as part of the grade school curriculum.
Any thoughts?
The gap makes money, and money making generally begets more.
But I would like to see those classes.
In Canada we have those classes as electives. In the states the education system is meant to make you stupid. That explains alot of it.
I don’t know if I would go as far as your last statement, but I do believe the system is severely lacking. And yes I completely agree with the idea of the gap making money. However, I believe closing this gap at least to the point where pure reliance is out of the question would not affect profits so severely that technology companies would oppose such a plan.
Look into no child left behind. It was designed to lower the intelligence of the American populace for the purposes of control.
Again, I agree that the education system has been and is severely flawed, but we will have to agree to disagree on the notion of any sort of conspiracy. If you would like to talk about that feel free to start your own post, but here I was hoping to discuss introducing computer science into the existing system (or whatever the improved system may be).
I’d go as far as to say the US school system is seen as a joke by the rest of the Western world. In fact I believe comparative studies you scored even less than us, and we are becoming a nation of chavs!
I studied computers at school and college (equivalent to high school US), however when I realised there was too little if any programming and a lot of theory I gave it up. If there had of been courses more geared towards programming I would of stayed on it. Computing being compulsory is kind of unnecessary, in that we only really need to know how to use them fluently, not how they work. Although I know a bit about how computers work from my education, it really is not all that interesting unless you already love engineering, electronics and binary. I can’t see a great deal of people taking to this class, unless it offers a choice of areas in computing, from work place type knowledge to the esoteric world of the ALU in bit maps.
I’d like to see the public school system actually teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic.
this topic brings up a very important question…
what are you going to teach?..what do you want a student to learn?
ok lets say you teach computer science in high school…then what will the student cut out…
what do we want students to learn? big question…
and who should decide?
I don’t know about computer ‘science’, because I’m not sure most elementary school children have the motor muscle, eye-hand coordination, or comprehension skills for that–and that’s a matter of development. However, when my daughter was in 3rd grade, (I was a ‘class’ Mom) we went off to the computer lab once a week where the kids were taught basic computer skills and very basic programming.
Also, the structure of education in the US is different than the structure of education in other parts of the western world. For example, we have no separation of student goals (usually arrived at by testing) between those guided into a trade/tech school, those guided into the arts, and those (the majority) left to go to college or university–or drop out way before that. It’s very unfortunate, but the trade and art classes are the first to be cut in budget crunches. We’ve lost sight of what ‘equal education’ for ‘all’ really means. NCLB is an insidious, horrible, example of this.
Calrid we may call it something different here, but I feel the U.S. has plenty of chavs so I wouldn’t say the U.K. and the U.S. are too different in that respect at least. However, I completely disagree with you on the idea that it’s ok for people to only understand how to use these technologies. The information gap allows for the information “haves” to set the precedence for how/what technologies will be used while the “have-nots” are powerless to do anything about it. Take Microsoft’s Windows OS for example. hundreds of thousands of copies of this software are sold to schools in the U.S. costing the system at the very least Millions of dollars (I am not sure of the exact deals they have worked out). This expense is appalling me as there is a perfectly good 100% FREE OS in the various distributions of Linux that circulate the internet. The only reason the schools do not implement Linux is that it actually takes fairly intimate knowledge (comparatively) of how computers/networking works behind the scenes in order to set up and maintain a school wide network. This knowledge is often beyond the reach of the average public school IT figure. Teach an introductory Linux or networking class in grade school and high school and this problem may go away. This is just one small example, but extrapolate this line of thinking and you could see some significant changes.
Lizbethrose, first off I just want to clarify that the program you and your daughter participated in is exactly what I am talking about (programming and basic computer skills would fall under computer science(theory), you might be thinking of computer engineering(design and fabrication)). The only difference I guess would be that I would like to see such a program included in the core curriculum for grade schools and high schools. I agree that the current general structure is lacking and would personally like to see students ushered onto the career path they enjoy as soon as possible so that interest in education is preserved (also i think you would see less C average art majors in the streets yelling about how they can’t pay off they’re college debt, but maybe that topic is more suited for the rant section 
).
Turtle, these are all great questions and I do not have a final plan designed by any means so forgive me if my answers are not ideal. My idea is that basically, by the end of high school, the student should have the cumulative understanding of a basic introductory university computer science class (i.e. an understanding of binary numbers, overview of the physical system, basic algorithm proficiency, basic understanding of networking, etc.). This would be coupled with small application classes like programming and how to navigate through software (preferably the free Linux). I’m not certain at what levels these classes would occur but I would imagine you could start basic binary when the child is just learning to count and built a dual understanding from there.
Thanks for all your responses and sorry for the ridiculously long post.