What do they teach in high schools now?

[zeroth]

They often teach VB with C and C++ for the higher grade students.

[zemus]

I think they often start students off with a 'pseudocode' kinda language, and then move on to a basic language.

[catalyst]

I personally think that not only should programming be taught in high school, it should be required. Often the United States public scool system is pushed to the lowest common denominator (encouraged ecven more by the No Child Left Behind legislation) creating an environment that is boring and greatly short-changes the students. Pushing them a little bit , I think they would rise to the challenge. Of course that is also assuming that personal responsibility was re-established as something to be valued and not just a burden that is to be avoided.

[Will.Spencer]

I'm not sure that programming is a useful life skill for a large percentage of Americans. What percentage of people are going to ever write a useful piece of code?

I do agree with you on the larger picture, our government-run K-12 school system is a complete disaster.

[tilldoomsday]

They only really teach the basic of design. We barely got into dreamweaver and flash before class was over.

[catalyst]

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

I'm not sure that programming is a useful life skill for a large percentage of Americans. What percentage of people are going to ever write a useful piece of code?

I do agree with you on the larger picture, our government-run K-12 school system is a complete disaster.

Programming teaches (or at least should teach) how to break a problem down into a series of logical steps. That is a very useful life skill to have and one that is often times lacking in development.

Also, the idea of pushing them a bit comes out of management philosophy. It was an idea that came out of a company called Newcore Steel: Hire 5, work them like 10, and pay them like 8. People rise to challenges and you will get some of the best work you have ever seen out of them. That said, challenge and incentive go hand in hand. This idea is unusable without giving them a reward for the effort at the end and a HS Diploma I do not view as an adequate reward.

[Will.Spencer]

I very much agree that we should be pushing our K-12 students harder academically.

I am just not convinced that programming is the way to do it.

I believe that we should add courses like Deductive Logic into the K-12 curriculum.

Our current K-12 schools are little more than government-funded daycare.

[Faucet]

nicely put ^^. I think that over the future, we will be going more head on into coding and technology cuz it's become more of a part of our lives.

[John]

To throw in my proverbial 2 cents, here is what my somewhat brief experience with Computing at A Level encompassed:

- Databases, including design, appropriate structuring and interaction, which also included the basics of SQL.

- Data storage, with reference to sequential data sources, parity bit checking and so forth.

- Introduction to Visual Basic which included one hour per week of programming for around 6 months.

- The basics of the internet, introduction to markup languages, working of a modem.

- Networking, with reference to LAN, WAN, ring, peer to peer etc etc.

- Large section on hardware, bus interaction, how memory handles data, basics of troubleshooting.

- Programming structuring, which basically involved writing programs in something halfway between Basic and English. Great for learning logical sequencing and how a computer interprets things we might consider trivial.

Although this was a fairly useful course for the majority, as it covered a large range of topics and didn't limit ability, a lot of it was far too basic for anybody with prior knowledge. Without wanting to blow my own trumpet, I and a handful of friends had spent years working with computers. We knew far more than the basics, developed sites on the web, could throw together simple VB applications and so forth.

This made the many lessons tedious. The only saving grace was that one of the teachers we had was keen on pushing those he considered better hard, and whilst the class got a particular set of problems, we'd get another that were arguable near-impossible!

I think Computing is taught reasonably well in the UK, and although the curriculum is varied, perhaps the lack of specialisation means too many people end up knowing a bit about everything but lack expertise in anything.

Perhaps the first year should be taught as a general Computing course and then move into optional topics in further years to let people develop their own path and follow what interests them most. Perhaps if they did that, they might have just kept me interested enough to do Computing in the second year!

[DeusExMachina]

I just got out of high school (thank God!) and remember a computer class that I took as a requirement. It pretty much taught us to work with MS Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. It was a crappy class because I already knew my way around those programs. On top of that, my teacher didn't know anything about computers and would just give us bookwork. I ended up telling her off by bombarding her with technical questions and finished off with: you're not qualified to teach this class.

[jon2056]

WOW. Deus I have just enetered the ninth grade and that basically sums up the computer class im taking! Word... Powerpoint.... useless things i already know :evil: i was really hoping to learn new things but uhh... not going to happen in this class

[Halobitt]

I went back to college recently to study web design and multimedia. It quickly became apparent that it was not for me. Not because I was not learning, but not learning enough. What surprised me most was that out of the 3 tutors teaching us, none of them actually ran a website!

So I left and will continue to pick things up as I go from helpfull people on forums such as this.