Cavalier Cavalry
Consumers or Producers?
Looking out at the class I wonder if we are teaching kids the right things. Currently they are in their fifth year of typing class without actually looking at the things that happen behind the scenes of the programs they are using. Junior Highs have so much trouble with discipline that any computer time quickly falls by the wayside before the equipment is destroyed. So in high school, that's where some kids, a few, get to start learning how to write programs and do any web development.
For too many, all their experience will lead them to just working with "front end appllications", where they consume content made by others. This will block them out of one of the few growing industries, and put even the nation at a disadvantage as other countries invest in education in programming. Our ability to control standards as related to our principles related to freedom of speech and the protection of personal privacy.
Fourth or fifth grade is an appropriate time to start getting kids interested in building websites, developing their own appropriate educational content. By using web development to propigate standards in math, science, and writing, and doing so with the kids themselves developing the sites rather than being forced into a paid-for front end (usually at a high cost) the students will make strides into becoming the net-savvy PRODUCERS that we will need in the coming decades of the 21st Century.
31 March 2017
Douglas C. Glendower