Ask HN: What should be taught in high school?
I'm an educator with a CS / programming background. There's a possibility that I'll be moving into the 'Information and Communications Technology' role next year at my medium sized high school (grades 9-12, ~700 students, diverse student population). My jurisdiction's curriculum in this area is not well developed, and there are no standardized tests to prepare for. I'll have an amount of freedom in deciding course content that's unusual for high school teachers.
What would HN have the modern western high school student learn with respect to "Information and Communications Technology"?
245 comments
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You can add some nice color, bold letters, and other visual stuff to make an informal report.
You can make nice graphics. I like dispersion graphics. Sometime the linear approximation is useful, but perhaps it's too much for 9-12yo.
I was already pretty tech-savvy in those days but that was still one of the best things I learned as a kid computer-wise. The fundamental principles of a spreadsheet has never changed and I learned it as a 12 year old.
I don't understand why you would force your children to depend on an unethical for-profit corporation. Why not LibreOffice? 99% of what normal people need is covered in it.
Also, at least when I went to school the software versions used were fairly old (partly because of the budget and partly because that is what the teachers originally developed their course for). Those were different enough (think pre-ribbon) to trip those people up who memorized instead of learning what things mean. I.e. "spreadsheets" skills transfer, "this is what the button looks like in office 95" does not.
Schools are for learning not for training for corporate.
??
I'm not saying it couldn't be done (and run on Linux of course) but the entire industry needs professional support tailoring the needed software package, solve problems, install updates or define the needed hardware all are (presumably easily) solvable with Microsoft or Google products, but don't have out of the box solutions for an entire country.
You can't rely on a school kid or teacher to install Linux distributions or download the right software.
Schools here in Sweden uses word/google docs but not sheets for some reason.
Good luck, I think this is awesome. I would also echo teaching a real spreadsheet class would be an awesome idea as there is so many issues you can solve using spreadsheets.
Having students do financial arithmetic on paper is as helpful and realistic as having them write out essays in cursive handwriting.
It was all concepts and foundational equations like compound interest.
If you're using the fact that this would involve "spreadsheets" as a way to link it it ICT education which is what this thread is about then I don't even know what we're talking about anymore.
That is, emphasize finances (practically, using realistic tools). Covering basics of Finance is probably fine, but only to the extent that they understand the gravity of a 22% compound interest rate. Being able to do complex calculations with that rate is probably less practical than learning some other things, like knowing how buying a piece of property works.
Financial education is WAY more complex than it was 20 years ago, with many more ways for people to go wrong
Typically, kids learn more from the ACTIONS of adults in their lives than WORDS. I may have picked up my simple way of life from my parents when cash was tight but my younger ones who grew up in a more financially relaxed atmosphere are spend thrifts.
Basic economics, Supply and Demand.
Comparative Mythology/Religion.
Maybe some of those things can't be taught effectively at school, but I sure don't think most kids are learning that stuff at home. Perhaps your school might sponsor a Scouts BSA program? A lot of the character development stuff can be taught that way.
(And a lot of people on reddit say taxes.)
Source: Why Knowledge Matters - E.D Hirsch
Don’t go round believing things just because you want them to be true, or disbelieving things just because you don’t want them to be true. Don’t rush to judgment just because something provokes a strong emotional reaction. Always be doubting, always be listening to points of view that differ from your own. That kind of thing.
A lot of intelligent people seem to have skipped thinking about that one. I'd love to get it and a negotiation course into a high school curriculum.
It was a pretty eye opening task showing how 2 articles which both report only the truth can be twisted to bring about different stories/emotions.
'look at this fake news asserting A...this story is misleading because B is actually true'.
The same can be done with data visualizations.
Regularly mix in half truths or outright lies and see who challenges you. Check a few classes later for who verified the claims. Do this often enough and at least 1% will bite.
Lastly, the habit of reading for pleasure is a natural fake news antidote. Over time, a person who reads widely will build enough expertise to spot rubbish.
Example, in unknown territories, I could be as gullible as my grandmother. Yet, it's very easy for me to spot wrong, misleading results on Google's search results and articles - in areas where I'm well read.
I've told my younger bro that his MBA professor's wrong about in one area or another. Since I don't have an MBA, he'll naturally discount my position. He'll however, agree with me a few month's later, when another professor or sometimes the same prof backs up my claim.
Summary: Cultivate the hacker's love of boundry-less learning in kids.
Hopefully, that will also encourage a skeptical mindset which helps in other areas of life (religion, politics, pseudoscience, “alternative” medicine, etc).
The whole job a school is to do nowadays is to motivate, answer specific questions and connect young people.
I really don't understand why are kids supposed to waste time with mediocre teachers (provided they even manage to get into a tolerable school, many have not a chance given where they live and how much do their parents earn) when there are great educators lecturing for everybody online. The problem, however, is many don't even know they can find great educational content on YouTube so they only use it to watch the stupid stuff.
* assuming they have computers with the internet, you may try to integrate some online self-paced web-based interactive training. This will leverage massive existing efforts.
* ideally there could be multiple tracks/programs in the same class for people at different levels or interests. this is much more practical if you have some way to do self-paced learning
* you might include something like Slack or Discord or some online site briefly. unless this category is something kids are already experts on
* spreadsheets and word processing seem very important and maybe are the mandatory part you try to get everyone through
* programming, AI and/or robotics would be nice to include some self-paced exercises for an advanced optional track. Again, lots of websites for this stuff.
* Many kids are interested in streaming. "How to get started on Twitch"
* "How to Google" https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/how-to-...
* 3D modeling, basic video editing, Adobe stuff (websites/Blender)
I guess my answer is, ideally, Everything, self-paced or maybe small-group-paced. Maybe hard to do that, but I think if they are allowed to self-direct to some extent and have different options then they will get much more out of it. Maybe everyone does WP/spreadsheets or whatever basic stuff and then they have to pick a secondary track once they get through that.
I really wish there was a way for engineers to help public schools educate students in software development. Years ago, I offered to teach a class at my old high school, and even _tried_ to donate $5,000 to help fund it. Not only was it rejected, but the people working there seem not to care.
This was a school in North Philadelphia.
The purpose is to be able to reason about how computers work in general. It's similar to teaching people how cars or plumbing works; they may not be able to build it, but they could conceivably troubleshoot and attempt to repair it, and it makes tech jobs easier.
Before I saw this comment I was going to say teach them typing - is that still taught in school? I think quite honestly learning to type at an early age made the difference between someone interested in computing and someone completely passionate about computing.
After that I’d say teach them how to network their computers together, learn how to research/ read RFC’s. I think there’s some really compelling writing in RFC’s... maybe teach them how to survive on a vt100 terminal... I also think learning about optics is a great way to teach basic electronics and physics.
I took such a philosophy course in college and it was quite informative as a way to reason about problems. It helped me with my debugging, to move from “x is the problem” to “I believe x is the problem, and here is why I believe this causal relationship exists.”
I think this is what most of us call “critical reasoning” skills, or “how to think.” But this particular line of causality, and analyzing the strongest statement one could make based on a set of premises, is a skill that has served me well as an engineer.
One outcome is that students can be active users rather than passive consumers and think critically about topics such as privacy and social media.
Other outcomes are improved computer literacy, and perhaps inspiring some students to pursue computing as a hobby or career -- but the demystification and critical thinking will benefit all of the students, not just the ones who are interested in computers.
There’s a really good course on edX called “Logic and Computational Thinking”. It’s pretty basic and you could probably finish the whole thing in a Saturday. I would imagine much of the content is in line with the capability of the average high schooler. It was a good (and unintimidating) starting point for learning how computers “think”.
This is really concerning to me as a father to a daughter. Is this a research finding? This can be decoded as saying women have lower IQ than men because people who are good with numbers generally have higher IQs.
Of course there's a lot of individual variation. Some people simply are bad at math. But I think more people allow themselves to be intimidated by it when it's not necessary.
In any case, my mother and sister were/are better with numbers than words (which is also true for the men in my family).
As for IQ, it's about a lot more than just being good with numbers. There are many aspects to it. Though it also depends on how you define it. Different IQ tests can sometimes measure different things.
Stereotype thread studies doesn't replicate that well.
https://replicationindex.com/2017/04/07/hidden-figures-repli...
However, I wrote “whether by nature or nurture” because my ultimate goal was to let OP know that teaching logic might be a good avenue to spark the interest of high school girls who were like me - interested in CS even though they might have been discouraged from participating and feel like they don’t have the “natural” ability because they’ve been pushed toward language skills for most of their academic career. My message would have been brushed aside (at best, I likely would have been, and perhaps will be, berated) had I written “as a woman although I was interested in numbers I was encouraged to focus on words”. And so, like women often do[2], I held back my true thoughts on the matter because I hoped that doing so would be for the greater good if it meant OP would be the CS teacher I wish I had as a high school girl.
[1] https://time.com/81355/girls-beat-boys-in-every-subject-and-...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/sunday/girls-scho...
As a man and a mechanical engineer, I was and still am way better with words than numbers and I think it's perfectly OK. Heck, I almost hate numbers and symbols without (the explanatory) words/paragraphs. I struggled at classes throughout all my years as a student since almost every topic in engineering is "applied", hence without a rigorous (theoretical) background and so much example/case based.
I wonder if it has something to do with how one's memory works. Isn't it easier for everyone to remember/visualize concepts and then deriving the formula than trying to remember the exact formula? (Writing this down, I imagine the people who do the former are better with words as the ones who do the latter are better with numbers). The derivation of equations governing the Hagen–Poiseuille flow is a good example, I presume[0].
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagen%E2%80%93Poiseuille_equat...
The numbers and symbols only make sense in the context of some specific language game. If you work in a domain a lot, then repeated sequences of symbols and conventional naming of variables hints what language game you're playing. Without that, everyone needs the explanatory words/paragraphs.
> Isn't it easier for everyone to remember/visualize concepts and then deriving the formula than trying to remember the exact formula?
Yes. There's an interesting notion of a "recovery procedure" in Borovik's "Mathematics Under the Microscope" where he points out that mathematicians don't remember formulas and theorems, they remember simple procedures that recover them.
Sexist.
> And, whether by nature or nurture, as a woman I was always better with words than numbers
CS + Liberal Arts is a powerful combination
I would have gotten much more out of that than something more general or less technical.