I disagree with all of this.  In the “ideal world”, perhaps this might ring true. However today’s reality is much uglier when it comes to the elementary classroom.  Kids aren’t even taught the basics effectively.  Cursive writing is a thing of the past.  Reading?  Forget it.  Times tables?  Who does that anymore?  Even though cognitive evidence suggests the importance of these most basic skills, and how it’s crucial for critical and crucial motor skills and brain patterns to form, reading writing ‘rithmetic is now being overlooked and instead kids are encouraged to via smartboards and/or tablets. 

I have no issue with kids learning new ideas, however when they are at the expense of learning the fundamentals, I take great exception to that.  Yes, kids are flexible, but point them in too many directions, and they’ll end up learning nothing.  Perhaps I am somewhat sensitive based on the province’s announcement to mandate Coding at all our elementary schools this Fall, starting in Kindergarten.  Really?  Is that what our teachers and kids really need?  We all know what the reality will be:  Hours of playing Minecraft, rather than actually learning anything effective…all at the expense of literature, arithmetic and Science lessons.  Teachers are already stretched to the max, now we want to dump even more crap on their shoulders??

I also disagree with this assumption that kids need to be pushed in STEM jobs over a Liberal Arts degree in university.  University is a place for LEARNING, not JOBS.  And I would argue the very basis of our university establishment is being eradicated by this constant push for kids to be “trained” for jobs.  If there are fewer kids entering STEM subjects in university, that’s because they lack the basic knowledge to get them there.  The school system is letting thousands of kids down by not teaching them properly, which makes them ill prepared for STEM subjects at university.  And can you blame them?  Why tackle a subject which is completely confusing to you?

Our very basis of discourse, history, philosophy and an appreciation of the Liberal Arts is under attack.  As much as I’m an advocate for better math instruction for our students, I am also a strong believer that the General Arts at the university level is equally important.  Many huge tech companies are now employing English and Liberal Art grads to help them with their programming due to the thought process that these graduates have. They bring a different perspective to the workplace, and it’s proving to be incredibly successful.

Education is about being well rounded, not about creating minions for the workplace.  Let’s remember that.

I would further suggest, that if Coding is so lucrative of a career, why is it that the billionaires in Silicon Valley don’t choose it for their own kids?  Ditto for those parents who send their kids to elite private schools in the UK?

http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/dec/02/schools-that-ban-tablets-traditional-education-silicon-valley-london

The reality behind Coding is that the average job is nothing more than a bit above minimum wage for most.  Yes, the Steve Jobs of the world did well, but the overwhelming majority of those in the workforce aren’t Steve Jobs.  We need well rounded individuals to govern our workplaces, as well as our society.  Coders don’t take care of us in care homes or fix our pipes or build our homes.  We need all sorts of people with all sorts of skills for all sorts of jobs.  And the impetus behind choice, and good jobs, is a well rounded education, strong in the arts, literature and arithmetic.

And don’t even get me started on the negative impact of kids and computer screens in schools.

1) Wholeheartedly I agree with Tara about the importance of teaching the fundamentals first.

2) If math and english are not taught well now, what makes us think that coding or technical subjects will get taught well?
Personally I don’t think coding or technical subject should be taught before 12 for any kid, a lot of kids would not be ready at 14.
Math, music, grammar anything that requires careful practice and precision are excellent foundations. Without such foundations kids cannot learn technical subjects because you can’t guess at them and not any answer is good because it’s creative!

3) There is a lot of debate about the role of universities. I think most students go to university not only to educate themselves but also and perhaps mainly to get a better paid job. Very few of us are so rich to not expect our kids to earn their own living. And most of us want a good living.

Tara, I completely disagree with you on
>>
Many huge tech companies are now employing English and Liberal Art grads to help them with their programming due to the thought process that these graduates have.
<<
What you are describing is the exception, the 0.5% of English and Liberal Art grad - yes, I’ve met one such person in 25 years - it is in no way the rule.

One of the reasons high school students choose to study English and Liberal Arts in such high numbers is that they are not able to do well in anything else: they hate math, biology or chemistry are too much material, they can’t do high school physics because it requires logical thinking ...business seems boring.

Again, I’m talking about the majority, not the exceptions. English and Liberal Arts are easier to do at an average level because a lot of things are relative and subjective.
Much harder when you try to find decently paid employment these days. The only options are teacher, communications/writing for companies ..

But because mom and dad got an English or Liberal Arts degree 30 years ago when far fewer people had a university degree and did very well ... somehow people kid themselves thinking that they would be the exception.
There are so many that work as secretaries, in call centres, doing back office jobs ... I don’t think that’s what they were getting a university degree for neither in terms of work nor in terms of pay. And these jobs are now being outsourced in huge numbers to India.

Again I am talking about the majority the 60-70-80%. There are always people that are passionate about something and work at it and they are really, really good at it.

Thanks for your thoughts.  The main thing I object to, is trying to tell a kid to take a particular subject in order to make a good living.  That’s bogus.  My Dad had 2 university degrees and he still had to hustle to find a decent paying job when he graduated back in the early 60’s.  And his job had nothing to do with what he studied at university, but it was because of his university experience, i.e. learning to think and learn a few things, that served him well in his job.  This was the same scenario when I graduated in the 80’s.  No different.  Today we have far too many university graduates looking for the same high paying jobs…not so many willing to take on 2 lousy paying jobs in order to pay the bills.  And so there’s a lot of blame being cast at the university, typically because mum and dad now pay for it, that the universities have to conform in order to better prepare their kids for a career.

This is wrong.

Regardless of what subject a kid wants to pursue at a post secondary institution - whether it be an Arts School or an Engineering program at Queens, they would be better served to take as many different courses as possible.  It will serve them well.  Many Science grads have remarked how beneficial that Philosophy was in university…how it helped shape their thinking.  And the same for those Humanities students.  Take a Calculus course to challenge yourself!!  THAT is what university is supposed to be like.  No generation ever had it easier than the previous one.  I don’t recall any in my parent’s generation having it easy, and none ever expected a job was owed it to them merely by attending university.

We all have to work for it.

And in the meantime, let’s cherish what university institutions SHOULD be offering:  a challenging perspective to the mind, and finding out different ways to solve the problem.  As well as learning a tremendous dose of humility, and humanity along the way.

Tara:  the point I was trying to make is that computation is both a discipline and a way of looking at the world, call it “computational epistemology”.  Although computation is relatively new, it may be as important as math and writing, and is very complementary both (I didn’t talk about the process of writing code, but it has many similarities to writing prose).

DO NOT confuse the use of tablets with the study of computation.  I would also like to ban tablets, phones, and all forms of social media from schools.

Technology companies sometimes hire Liberal Arts grads, for example as graphic designers but that is a demanding discipline in its own right.  Journalists cannot write a user manual if they don’t understand the processes at a deeper level.  My own company once hired a theater grad but only as a receptionist.

A student who works through Newton’s method for finding square roots will have a deeper understanding of roots, and perhaps a fearless interest in the ways they can be used.

Tom you are talking about a subject coming from the perspective as a successful entrepreneur in the dot com industry.  You and I both know that in the public school system, this interpretation will be watered down and misunderstood.  I know you do not agree with technology in the classroom, my point though, is that our educators will utilize the implementation of Coding as an excuse to ensure every child receive a tablet by Grade One and Minecraft will be the new Babysitting tool for our public school system.

Is Coding a good idea?  Perhaps.  By your own example, you have demonstrated success and have shown what a skill honed over years of experience can obtain.  However these skills were obtained AFTER you already received your core mastery of reading, writing and arithmetic.  Just because kids like to learn, shouldn’t mean we should burden them with more subjects than they can handle.  Do Asian countries have Coding in schools?  Hmmmm.  And my illustration of the Waldorf School in Silicon Valley, other private schools in that area as well as elite schools in the UK.  Do they think it’s a good idea?  I’d say if the CEO of Google believes his kids should learn handwriting and times tables over Coding, then perhaps this should be emphasized for all our kids in the public school system.  The public school system was developed to get kids OUT of the factories…why are we now hellbent on teaching them skills at the elementary level to get them back IN the factories?!?  Is there room at the high school level?  Perhaps.  But we should not be putting adult expectations on the shoulders of wee kids.

Your Dilbert illustration is inaccurate in my opinion as well.  If we had no journalists, or English majors, where would the world be?  I have worked in a dot com company back in the 90’s.  It was the most miserable job experience I’ve ever had.  Our programmers would roll in bleary eyed, at 8 a.m., with their Big Gulp and bag of chips for breakfast after being up all night playing their video games.  I am sure they were nice people, but it was hard to tell because they had zero social skills and zero capacity for any other job outside of computer programming.  Is that something i’d want to push on my kid over the expense of a Liberal Arts degree?  Hardly.

Everyone is in a rush to hop on the bandwagon of what our kids need.  Let them be kids.  And let our universities offer a rich assortment of different subjects to help shape the way our kids think.  We need more like that, not less.   

Your wish is about to come true here in BC, as Coding will be mandated in the curriculum for K-12 students this Fall.  Stay tuned…

“My own company once hired a theater grad but only as a receptionist. “

Well, being a receptionist early on in my career at various companies prepared me well and led to excellent job prospects because of that experience.  I cannot say the same thing would occur for those incredibly gifted programmers/Coders/tech guys I worked with back at the dot com company.  Their skillset was incredibly narrow, and as they had no social skills, their career options were much narrower than mine…a former receptionist,a barmaid, or a waitress, or a weed picker in the Australian Outback…amongst many of my former jobs.  Each experience has served me well, and made me a better employee, and a better person.

And I would argue that its BECAUSE of your traditional education Tom, that made you a successful entrepreneur.  Structure and discipline of the basics frees the mind to become more imaginative, and more intuitive.  Adding one more subject for kids to master will simply overwhelm young minds. 

Leave it until after the fundamentals are already taught.  But first, ensure that the fundamentals ARE taught properly.

This is an interesting discussion for me!

a) Yes, I think an analytical way of looking carefully at processes and patterns and being able to describe them is very important and very useful.
I think - I may be wrong - this is what Tom called “computational epistemology” and what I was trying to say about the abilities one gets by doing music, grammar, math seriously, not superficially.
Learning well anything that is more complex and has patterns would probably give this ability.
Unlike liberal arts I’ve met some very good, clearly above average software writers that had university degrees in music composition or performance.
Quite a few students that are admitted into top math, engineering and computer science have studied and played a musical instrument for 8-12 years.

b) Tara I agree with you that we should not push our kids into taking a particular subject just because it pays better.

That being said most of our kids need to make their own living. And our kids want, actually a lot of them think they are owed, a good living.

I highly doubt that they do a Liberal Arts degree just for the sake of learning and bettering themselves. That’s certainly not what their parents have in mind.
No one pays anywhere between
- 9,000 * 4 = 36,000 (only tuition + textbooks)
- 19,000 * 4 = 46,000 (tuition + textbooks + living)
with no expectations of significantly better pay than without university.
I highly doubt that they feel fulfilled because they’ve enriched their minds when they have so few well paid job opportunities. ...
Other than becoming a teacher in the public system and getting to teach math when they’ve always hated math, and phys-ed when they were never good at sports ... and so on and so forth!

c) Well-written books or articles and essay are beautiful and necessary in every society.

.. however our society only needs and has jobs in that field for only perhaps 5% of all the English and Journalism degrees.
Why are we encouraging them to do that? And be unhappy and bitter as if they were owed something.
Why am I as a taxpayer subsidizing education for these degrees for which there is no need?

Sorry Tara. The majority of kids don’t study Liberal Arts or English because of the many things they do well this is what they love the most.
They like Liberal Arts or English because it is the only thing thing they are somewhat good at ... because starting from elementary school they did not get taught the fundamentals properly.

It is very simple, really.
If you show up and keep doing the work you will get a Liberal Arts or English degree from some university.

With math, sciences, engineering, computer science while the quality and demand of programs vary quite a bit in my opinion, you won’t. You may not be very good at it but you will at least meet a minimum standard.
There doesn’t seem to be any minimum standard for Liberal Arts.

d) All in all we have an inflation of degrees and diplomas.
High school diplomas are meaningless.
And with university and colleges everywhere that have staff that need to earn a living I think more than 50% of high school graduates get a bachelor degree or a community college degree.

What does a bachelor degree mean today?
And maybe that’s a subject for another discussion.

Tara: We are mostly in agreement on life and education. My point is that “computation” is now a fundamental skill, as important as writing and math.  I have no hope that our schools will teach it properly.

Don’t let the Waldorf school cloud your understanding.  They also delay teaching reading, so it is not hypocritical that a tech millionaire’s child at a Waldorf school would not learn computation in early grades.

I’m sorry your work experience was so miserable.

You ask what would happen if we had no journalists, I think we are about to find out.  Every newspaper across the country is under siege from Google and “new media” (especially Postmedia), and are laying off journalists wholesale.  I’m guessing that journalists aren’t laughing at this Dilbert quote.

And to your other point about computation in Asian education, here’s news from Japan. http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0002951918

Thanks Tom,

Just to clarify, my work experience wasn’t miserable, only my job at the tech firm.  It was also the best paid job I ever had.  Go figure.

All other work experiences were fabulous, and they have all contributed to make me who I am today.

The argument about journalists has been around ever since the internet came on the scene.  They’re still here, and we still require they be good at their job.

You’ve validated my point about why Coding should NOT be taught in schools.  They will fail miserably at it.  So why not focus on what the mandate of schools has always been about?  The 3 R’s.  The rest will come later.

I’m not under any illusion the system is even very good at that in many circumstances, but it’s up to each generation to fight and ensure our kids obtain the best education that they can, with as little distraction as possible from other interested employers.  Coding is popular now…what’s it going to be in 10 years?  And does a nurse need good training in Code?  A fireman?  Policeman?  Everyone’s on the bandwagon for teaching wee kids life skills at the elementary level.  Leave them alone.  They’re kids, not prospective employees.

Hi FromEurope,

I appreciate your comments, and I would agree mostly with what you are saying here.  I am under no illusion that kids obtain a Liberal Arts degree today to broaden their mind; I never said that this was the sole motivation.  I get it.  The point I was making, is that it CAN and SHOULD be part of a kid’s university experience.  Reading the Classics, engaging in a debate, writing a History paper examining the arguments of our forefathers…I am referring to those arguments and discussions which are no longer read by modern day historians.  They are rich in discourse, and a worthwhile read in determining the though process behind creating a democratic society, and Parliament.  And through our math advocacy I am fully aware of the decrease in STEM jobs, and the decline in math skills that our kids have.  My point, is that the Liberal Arts is no less valuable than any other undergrad degree.  I do not think an undergrad degree will really help any of our kids pull ahead in a job interview these days regardless of what it is.  It’s become the equivalent of a high school degree, because, as I mentioned earlier, there are tons more university graduates than there was a generation ago, any many more than 2 generations ago.  There are many fish swimming around, trying to nab that one piece of bait.  Perhaps some with an undergrad in math might pull ahead, but not by much.  What really seems to help pull ahead, is job experience, work ethic, and the fact that these kids have a piece of paper that indicates they know how to think a little bit.  Further schooling, and advanced degrees might also help, but this is also becoming an item that hundreds of thousands of our graduates are possessing.  So again, how to differentiate between candidate “A” and candidate “B”?

Many parents that I know are pressuring their kids to go to university and enroll in a subject that will help them get a career when they graduate.  These kids face additional pressure, because most of them have their schooling paid for by their parents.  Interesting to note, that despite all of this, the percentage of university graduates really hasn’t changed throughout the ages.  It’s still very low. 

In the end, it’s not really about how kids are owed a job based on the amount of tuition they’ve had to pay, nor is it about the demands of the workplace.  Has the workplace changed?  Absolutely.  But not anymore or any less than any other generation.  Pigeon holing kids to train for a future career, at the age of 7, is unnecessary.  I am all for high school career prep, and even some introductory courses perhaps at the Middle School level.  Just so those kids who don’t “get” school, can see that there are options for them and might encourage them to hang on and persevere.  But overall, our school system needs to persevere and ensure their 3 core fundamentals be mastered before kids move on to higher grades.  The erosion of ensuring these fundamentals are mastered, is a big reason why so many parents are looking at alternatives for their kids, to ensure they have a better support system to meet these priorities.

And we must really acknowledge what the reality is for the “average” Coder.  Tom alludes to the higher realm of what Coding can bring to a child. The Stever Jobs of the world, though, is few and far amongst the millions of us regular Joes.  However if the average child is already struggling with the fundamentals, and then attempts to learn Coding as part of his/her schooling, he/she will go on to become nothing more than a minion on the factory floor.  The reality of jobs for these kids are 10-12 hour workdays, incredible stressload, repetitive work, and terrible working conditions

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21688390-glamorous-tech-startups-can-be-brutal-places-workers-other-side-paradise

English Majors and Philosophy Grads are among us.  They hold down fantastic jobs, and are scattered throughout 4 corners of the world.  As are computer programmers, Engineers and mathematicians.  They may or may not have ended up in a career which follows their studies in university, but it doesn’t matter.  Our utmost responsibility as a parent is to turn these creatures we call children into responsible, independent contributors to society.  We don’t owe them the right job or a nice house.  Life experience along the way helps shape them.  The best we can do, is try and ensure they are as well rounded as possible, have a good work ethic, and know how to hustle.  A dose of humility, and humanity goes a long way as well.

Thanks for your thoughts.

“Looking back at the tech teams that I’ve built at my companies, it’s evident that individuals with liberal arts degrees are by far the sharpest, best­-performing software developers and technology leaders. Often these modern techies have degrees in philosophy, history, and music – even political science, which was my degree.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2016/06/01/why-i-was-wrong-about-liberal-arts-majors/