Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart
I personally feel that teaching ICT is a good thing. However, I think we also need to start teaching pupils things that are a little lower level than what we teach now. Things like how computers actually work at the OS level, and how to program (in Java or C++ rather than VBScript).
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I disagree here. It's an increasing complaint people are having about IT education that students do not know how to program. I cannot see why they should. I myself am I programmer and it's a specific skill and actually one that I don't have to call upon for everyday life, I can't recall a single time I have needed to write some code to achieve a non-work related task. What's more it's a skill that easily atrophies without regular use, frameworks, languages and libraries I haven't used for years are forgotten. You also have to remember that a large part of modern programming concerns it's self with abstract notions to make it easier such as variables, methods, objects, inheritance and more all of which are fundamentally useless if applied elsewhere.
We also have little time to teach students. They have to be educated in so many other things that their education within IT should not be spent on a specific and narrow skill but a broader understanding of the basics of computing, the internet and so on.