[clug] [OT] Any LA or CLUG reaction to the new ALP Policy

[George at Clug]

    "Coding in schools" ?, 25 years ago I was speaking to a new
teacher in the work force who told me that when he was at school the
idea was to teach all the students how to program in machine code so
they could be ready for the digital age. He remarked what a stupid
idea that had been. 
The reality was;
1) machine code was rarely used by the time he left school. 
2) the number of programming jobs that eventuated was highly over
estimated.

Today most of the coding is outsourced to lower cost centres in other
countries, will this trend be reversed?

Any language taught will be redundant by the time students leave
school.

Most companies have turned to packaged applications, and do not employ
people to write code.

In several years, computer programs will be writing code, not people.

There will always be some coding projects, particularly for
exceptionally talented people. 

The article in http://www.alp.org.au/futuresmartschools states
"Computer programming and coding is already part of the primary
curriculum in England, Belgium and Finland, Estonia, the Netherlands,
Italy and Greece". Yep these are the countries that have a good handle
of, and past experience at being at the cutting edge of IT trends.

Maybe identifying exceptional talent and guiding these students would
be of use ?

The article mentions "and account for around 5 per cent of all
employment in 2025" - would it not be best to focus on the other 95%
of employment opportunities?

Personally I think this ALP policy is way off track.  I would like to
see them restore CSIRO's staffing levels, or lower the cost tertiary
education to Australians by supporting our Universities?  They did
once. 

Helping any misguided students who want to enter a career path of long
hours and basic remuneration could be fun, if it were not for the long
hours which does not leave much time for such pursuits. We could guide
the students to for Google if they did not want to work for Apple ? 
 http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=90_Hours_A_Week_And_Loving_It.txt



At Monday, 18-05-2015 on 16:04 steve jenkin wrote:


Any interest in either Linux Australia or CLUG on this “let’s
teach coding!”.
Seems like it would connect well with FOSS and other local teaching
ICT initiatives [recently on-list and “Outback Joe”]

The embedded notion in the ALP policy is “there’s one
‘language’”.
Don’t agree.

ALP Policy - Partnering Intel and ‘code.org'


Alan Kay, TED talk, Aug 2008. 10:45min


Alan Kay and his Viewpoints Institute.



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Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

mailto:sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin

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