Should programming become a basic subject [Part 2]

I interviewed more than 20 people from various backgrounds, asking them what they agreed or disagreed with about Obama, and the reasons behind their agreement or opposition. Among these people, some are developers, some are developers who value technical education, some are non-developers but focus on using technical tools, some are non-developers and do not have a deep understanding of technology interests, and some are first-time non-developers. As a parent... I try to look at the question of "whether programming should be a basic education" from more standpoints.

From the perspective of vocational skills, programming is not suitable as a basic subject

When I summarized the interviewees’ attitudes towards this issue, I found that many people tried to first define what “programming” should achieve as a kind of education. purpose, and then talk about whether programming should become a basic education. Interestingly, whether they support or oppose it, they do not believe that training "programming" as a vocational skill will have great value.

Zui Zui, who once opened a "broken chapter" column in iFaner and now serves as the CTO of a company, opposes that programming should be part of basic education. He believes, "From the perspective of cultivating basic learning abilities, programming is an applied technology, which is far less important than mathematics, literature, foreign languages, and nature for children in any country. From the perspective of cultivating technical work abilities, first, if he does not learn from experiment There is no need to follow the industry. If he engages in this industry, the update will be too fast, and it will waste learning time and energy to master the superficial knowledge." Harvard Nieman scholar and columnist Anti also expressed the same concern, "The biggest problem is. What if the programming language being promoted is outdated? How many liberal arts students were learning C language back then? What is its use now? There must be problems with administrative promotion of a language that was originally developed through competition. "

Former DoNews CTO, senior researcher at Shanda Innovation Institute. Huo Ju, who has now immigrated to the United States, also does not support that programming should become basic education. "Programming itself is not a subject, but a combination of many subjects and knowledge in other fields. Therefore, simply learning a computer language expression is not very helpful in solving practical problems."

"It is different from mathematics and physics. It is part of science. That is, for a person who has no mathematical concepts, learning mathematics must start from the most basic part. This is not the case with programming. The entire system environment and methods are changing rapidly, and the skills learned are lacking. It will become obsolete soon."

Tang Jingyi, product manager of Mobile QQ, believes that there is no need to start programming education too early. "Everyone has different talents, so why force them to use the services provided by programming does not mean they need to learn. There is no need for people to learn cooking. Just let people with interest and talent learn basic subjects, such as humanities, history, science and language. Programming is a professional skill. Just let some people follow it.”

In addition. , in my circle of friends, this issue triggered a long series of discussions. The overall focus is on the question "After programming becomes a basic subject, will it be able to stimulate people's creativity?" A friend believes that programming is an engineering discipline that focuses on the constant world of rules established by predecessors. It is a process of trying to eliminate uncertainty, which is very different from basic disciplines. Another friend believes that programming as a tool can actually stimulate children's hands-on ability and allow them to create things they like.

If programming is used as a basic subject, it may help students improve their logical thinking level and ability to solve problems independently

However, what if programming is not trained as a vocational skill, but as an enlightenment subject? Almost everyone supports it.

Yao Xinyu, founder of the code hosting community GitCafe, believes that programming can be a competent basic education subject. In his view, the role of basic education is to "teach a person basic life knowledge and basic skills in various fields, problem-solving abilities and ways of thinking, as well as ways to face failure and how to gain confidence through such a process."

" Programming itself is synonymous with problem solving. How to solve problems systematically and logically can best be taught through programming and its basic mathematical theory. In the process of learning programming, the search for information in unknown fields can be best taught. , acquisition and analysis will occur repeatedly. This is a situation rarely encountered in our traditional basic education disciplines, but it is a very important basic ability. Programming will invisibly and continuously strengthen a person's ability to rely on his own ideas. and the ability to find solutions.

Programming is not always smooth sailing. The code we write will often have bugs, fail to run, or fail to meet expectations. In the cycle of constantly experiencing small setbacks and debugging success, a It is very important for people to develop their own self-confidence and not panic about unknown problems.”

Liang Guopeng, the developer of the financial management application DailyCost, also believes that programming should be treated as a basic subject, but he believes that programming should be a stepping stone for people to become interested in computers. This is different from Yao Xinyu’s point of view:

"In today's computer extreme In the context of mass popularization, the level of science and technology in a country is largely determined by the level of computers. This level is not the level of using computers, but the level of ability to use computers, networks and other means to solve more complex problems, and learning programming is just one step. Getting started should be popularized as early as possible to arouse children's interest and lead them to get started. "

My friend Li Lu, a new mother and CTO of KnewOne, and Li Benqing, product director of Aifaner, believe that programming training is helpful. To cultivate students’ logical thinking. Li Lu said, “Software is the most complex thing that humans can create (it can reach more than 9 levels of abstraction). Programming is based on logic, and it is particularly effective to train thinking in this area.” He also believes that “getting started with programming does not require a lot of Prerequisite courses, but mastery is not easy, which is an important feature of basic education. "

Another reason for programming to become basic education is that technology has penetrated into life

Wang Yingqi, CEO of Punctual Alarm Clock, believes that "the entire world is already driven by software. , learning programming helps to understand the operating logic of the world, and there will no longer be the situation where someone points at the ticket vending machine and curses at the high-speed rail station."

The editor of Aifaner Huang believes that "Apps and mobile Internet have become indispensable in life. Just like building a house, repairing lights, and cooking in the past, learning programming is also a basic skill for coping with and changing life. "

Zhuang Xiuli, co-initiator of the "Education Discovery Community" and a teacher at Beijing Normal University, also said. Have the same opinion. "I agree with Obama's point of view, because when Obama expressed his desire to learn programming, he did not deny or reduce the importance of cultivating other basic literacy."

"The future world is a digital world, and all kinds of human information The development and storage of information are all expressed, disseminated and processed through digital programming. From this perspective, the world that a child comes into contact with from the moment he is born is the physical world woven and connected by digital symbols. When children have the opportunity to learn programming literacy, it will better help them understand and understand the world connected by digital symbols. ”

From a social perspective, if programming is turned into a basic subject, the consequences may be positive

Zhang Difan, CTO of Aifaner, supports programming as a basic subject. “President Obama’s proposal to make programming skills a part of basic education will be another decision that will have a major impact on American history. The national information infrastructure plan proposed by Clinton has prompted the recent development of the United States. Twenty years of leading the world in information technology, and training a generation with programming skills will provide more talent reserves for the development of the computer industry. This can be achieved through the Internet bubble period at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. It was obtained by the fact that the bubble stimulated talents studying CS (Americans habitually refer to computer majors as CS) and provided a large talent reserve for dynamic Internet startups after the subprime mortgage crisis, promoting a new entrepreneurial upsurge in the Bay Area. Confirmed. Moreover, this will also reduce the demand for foreign high-tech workers in the United States. "

Yao Xinyu believes that "the real emphasis on the cultivation of basic abilities in basic education is the biggest factor that widens the huge gap between countries. Easy-to-use tools and methods, and the United States is the first to realize this. Whether it is for political show reasons or true understanding, this will bring very positive effects.”

Now Shenzhen is regarded as China’s “Silicon Valley”. To a large extent, this is thanks to the "copycat" craze that ushered in in 2006 - in response to the rapidly changing market environment, a large number of highly skilled engineers were trained to form a flexible and efficient supply chain distribution. More importantly, because of the "shanzhai", Shenzhen may have the largest number of hardware engineers in the world. This is an advantage that Shenzhen, China, can compare with Silicon Valley.

In China’s exam-oriented education environment, programming is not suitable as a basic education subject

Miaoshi CEO Zhou Kaiwen said, “Domestic high school mathematics courses include Basic programming content, mainly explaining grammar, and this part of the college entrance examination It accounts for about 6 points. We have shown that programming has been included in basic education, but it is obvious that not many people have benefited from this kind of superficial programming education that is not combined with reality. No matter how good things are, I am afraid that it will not be spread to students in this form. What's the use? If programming is to be promoted as a basic education, it depends on whether it is passed in the exam and how many points it scores. "

If programming becomes a basic subject, the biggest challenge comes from the lack of teachers

Zhuang Xiuli explained the problems encountered in the promotion of technical education from the perspective of a teacher, "Promoting programming education actually includes two parts: one is the way of thinking, and the other is the operational technology level. The technical level content , is specific and changing, just like the development of programming languages, the content of the operation technology part is constantly changing, just like children in some primary and secondary schools now use Scratch software to program. , what is not easy to promote is the content that reflects the thinking behind the operation. Of course, if there are enough excellent teachers (excellent teachers who are more qualified to guide children in programming), promotion will not be a difficult problem. .

“The cultivation of excellent teachers cannot be developed in a short period of time. The development of teachers also requires corresponding soil. How to overcome this problem in promoting education and break down the barriers of traditional school mechanisms. No matter what method is used, children can have the opportunity to connect with various technological innovation enterprises or related non-governmental education organizations, and have the opportunity to experience the experience of those enterprises. Various educational services provided by the organization. "

Zhou Qi, founder of the Python Chinese community, believes that "the only difficulty in promoting programming education is the current society's overall attitude towards knowledge, information, and data." If it is generally believed that knowledge is useless, data is worthless, and information must be strictly filtered, then no matter how much programming education is introduced into the education system, it will not be able to induce reasonable contemporary information literacy. "

In addition, he also noticed that the diversity of programming technology choices also constitutes an obstacle to programming education. "In the technical circle, we all tell the joke that PHP is the best language. Almost all technical practitioners know this. This is an industry joke that satirizes various design issues in the PHP language. But in reality, although PHP is backward or even defective in some designs, such technology is widely used, and learning it is good for finding a job. Therefore, from the perspective of the education system, problems will be encountered at this time. Most of the methods used in society still focus on basic skills and teach the core foundation first. The diversity of the technical field makes programming actually a very large topic and system. ”

He believes, “Some social-oriented activities can be organized to let the public understand what programming is and what it is not, and what it can bring. Regarding the huge problem of programming technology system, standard elective content can be formulated first. , and then take electives on different technical routes according to interests and directions. ”

Summary

About what programming is and what it is not, may be another topic worth discussing. However, from the results of the interviews, it can be seen that in the face of a highly information-based society, some people think that mastering programming thinking , skills, can help children adapt to society and the world earlier

Indeed, in a country that still doesn’t understand how to search, it may be too early to advocate programming as a basic education subject

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