Computer programmers vs professional footballers

[Canopus]

Something interesting crossed my mind today. The number of school leavers over the past 20 years that became computer programmers is vastly more than those that became professional footballers. Therefore should schools be teaching computer programming rather than football?

[annie]

Good Point

[Tez]

I agree, computer programming should be taught far more widely in schools. Always wondered why it isn't.

[Canopus]

I agree, computer programming should be taught far more widely in schools. Always wondered why it isn't.

 

1. It isn't part of the National Curriculum.

 

2. It isn't officially part of the GCSE IT course although it's possible to write a piece of software for the GCSE IT coursework. Most students do something easier like designing a brochure with M$ Office. I read somewhere that the International GCSE IT covers programming. Do exam boards think foreign kids are cleverer than British kids?

[TuX]

Something interesting crossed my mind today. The number of school leavers over the past 20 years that became computer programmers is vastly more than those that became professional footballers. Therefore should schools be teaching computer programming rather than football?

Technology is a lot more important to todays society and a computer programmer [whether an unpaid free/ opensource programmer or a paid programmer] makes a bigger contribution to society than a pro footballer so I agree that schools should get their priorities sorted,but I cannot see them providing less sport/football because of the increasing obesity in kids,for a lot of them,PE is their only proper fitness jaunt of the week,so if schools took away some PE time,they would be called irresponsible for it,they blame technology for a lot of childhood obesity today as well [spending 'too much time' playing computer games and using the internet,or watching tv].

 

I would have liked to have learnt some computer programming back when I was in school apart from Pendown [anyone remember Pendown?] ,but the only things on offer were spreadsheets,piecharts.........all the boring mundane stuff,the only decent part of it was when it was close to a school break,the tutor got out a box of disks with games on [Lemmings,cannon fodder,and I think...Sensible Soccer].

Would be interesting to know what they do in school IT/ICT now,eg,do they teach website coding?

[Kathryn]

My daughter would have been a lot happier at school if computer programming had been offered. They didn't even offer IT as a separate GCSE option, much to her disgust.

[Canopus]

Neither did my school much to my disgust. The least the school could have done was enter me in for the exam and told me to study the subject and do the coursework in my own time. The teachers and the head fully well knew I was computer obsessed. To make matters worse at least half the school wanted to take the computing GCSE.

[jomica]

One of the problems about teaching computer skills is that a lot of today's teachers aren't actually as skilled as the children! My son goes to a top school in yorkshire and his GCSE teacher admitted, at the last parents evening, that actually he was playing catch up with the children, rather than the other way round and that the majority of them were ready to take the GCSE by the time they were about 13 or 14. My 13 year old has no fears of the computer at all. If he doesn't know how to do something, he looks it up, asks his programmer Uncle or simply tries different things until he finds the right solution. He's doing computer aided graphic design at home - all self taught and has taught himself html from scratch (and he's NT!).

 

Meanwhile my 8yr old with an ASD loves his football and would disagree entirely that football shouldn't be taught in schools. Football is his obsession, so you all know how much he knows about it .... everything he can cram in. He reads football books, watches football videos, plays football in a team (soooooooooooo good for him both physically and mentally - he loves it and it is socially acceptable to have football as an obsession!). He knows the history of teams and tournaments and .... well, you can imagine.

 

On the other hand, I'm all for balance in education. To me turning out a well-rounded, happy and well-educated child is important. So bring on the football, computers, music, 3Rs and everything in between.

[mossgrove]

It is a tricky one.

 

Jomica is right about the expertise issue. Th starting salary for a graduate Visual Basic programmer is more than the starting salary for a lecturer in an FE college, and an experienced programmer earns far more than a beginning teacher.

 

I have worked in IT for years, and sadly the skills that can be taught by Teachers/lecturers with No IT experience are not valued by the IT industry. You need to be taught by people who have seen it and done it, and people who have seen it and done it don't want to take the drop in salary.

 

Teaching IT is something I would love to do in future, but if I wanted to teach in a school I would have to wait until the bulk of my mortgage is paid off and take a year out with almost no money while I did my post-graduate teaching qualifications, and if I wanted to go into a college of FE I would have to take a huge drop in salary, which wonlt be feasible for a few years yet.

 

There are some people out there who have done what I would like to do in a few years time, but it is the dedicated few at the moment.

 

I disagree about the footballer issue though. PE and computing are not mutually exclusive and shouldn'tbe seen as such.

 

 

Simon

 

 

Simon

Edited January 20, 2006 by mossgrove

[Zemanski]

one of the problems with teaching programming rather than general use of computers is that it is changing so fast and by the time you've taught one language it's not the one employers or higher education need.

 

What is done though is using programmes which involve coding as a precursor to programming - things like flash and dreamweaver are now used in quite a lot of schools and even in primary school there is some development of programming skills with programmes like logo and control IT PC. Com was actually first introduced to flash at primary school

 

Zemanski

[Canopus]

I am fully aware that many kids know more about computers than their IT teachers know. IT is a stupidly trivial GCSE and a testimony to this is that even 6 year olds are capable of passing the exam with good grades.

 

Not many people qualified in IT or computer science want to go into teaching because the pay is so poor compared with industry and the careers are dead end. The only opportunity to move up the ladder is to become a head teacher and many teachers would rather teach than involve themselves in admin duties and bureaucracy. Therefore the teaching profession generally takes people who only have minimal knowledge of computers and are unlikely to know how to program unless they studied the subject in their own time.

 

There is also the problem of what programming language to use. Back in the 1980s it was BASIC because most schools used BBC computers and they had an inbuilt BASIC interpreter. Some schools used FORTRAN or Pascal for GCSE computing during the late 1980s and early 90s. What language should be used today? If a proper language is used then I would go for Java.