Steve Furber On Why Kids Are Turned Off To Computing Classes

nk497 writes "UK computing legend Steve Furber — co-founder of Acorn and ARM designer — believes students are avoiding computing classes because they teach nothing but the boring basics. Currently studying why the number of students signing up for computing has halved in the past eight years, Furber said schools focus too much on teaching kids how to use spreadsheets, word processors and PowerPoint, rather than teaching more challenging areas such as programming. 'What schools are presenting as ICT as an academic subject is very mundane compared with what students know they can do,' he said. 'It's as if maths was just arithmetic or English was taught as just spelling. It's not unimportant that you can do arithmetic or you can spell, but it certainly doesn't open up the whole world of interest and challenge, if that's all you do.'"

Because the kids are smarter than the teachers

[Captian Spazzz]

In this regard anyway. I remember I avoided PC classes all through school. Why waste elective credits on stuff I already knew and listen to a teacher, who can't progam their own VCR, try to tell me how a PC Functions or tell me the way I type is wrong?

Nothing agianst the treachers but in most cases they barely grasp what they themselves are teaching and its going to be a generation or two before this changes because the technology is new and still in a very rapid state of change.

I remember I didn't take a computer class until high school when they started offering A+ and CCNA and such as elective credits. I took keyboarding because it was a prerequesit, they wouln't waive it. The teacher knew nothing about what he was doing and was infurated with me because he gave me what he was sure was a whole periods worth of work to anybody, and I finished it in 5 minutes. I finaly got kicked out of his class when he sent me to the principals office because I would not respond when he called me "BOY!" It was one of those southren types where everyone in his class was either "BOY!" or "Sugar" He wrote me up for being disrespectful because I pointed out I had no idea he was talking to me because there were about 12 other boys in his class.

Luckily the principal realised how stupid it was and waived the requirement since I obviously could already type faster than I could talk.

Re:Guilty

[just fiddling around]

Brainfuck.

Re:well..

[ShadowRangerRIT]

I don't see any reason why a good programmer couldn't be a poor typist. For every line of code I write (parens and braces not included), I think for at least 20 seconds, and I suspect that counting the elongated breaks planning new sections, I might be closer to a minute on average. "Good" programmers would follow the 90/10 rule and realize that spending time optimizing the task that occupies less than 10% of their time isn't a worthwhile optimization. I happen to be able to touch type, but I never trained to do it, and I don't do it "correctly": no home row, just muscle memory for key positions. For a programmer, traditional home row isn't as useful anyway. Curly braces aren't easy to do while keeping your hands in the home position.

Different subjects deserve different names

[alexandre]

In french we have Informatique and Bureautique.
The first one being Comp. Sci.... the Second one being secretary work.

School usually don't teach the first one and think that kids learning the latest very specific version of whatever Microsoft released must be good.
What a shame!

Re:Agreed.

[aiht]

From the context, I suspect he thinks they were invented before electricity became commonplace.
Admittedly that's not too helpful, but a little wiki-ing says that the first commercial QWERTY typewriter was around 1870, while Edison didn't roll out his first electricity supply till around 1880 - to 59 customers. I don't think that counts as 'commonplace', so typewriter definitely wins that race.