Are You Smarter than a 1st Grader?

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Word is in...

You may not be smarter than a 1st grader for much longer. In Estonia of all places, "coding" is becoming part of the 1st grade curriculum and is something that is going to be taught to students throughout their elementary and secondary years of schooling.

If anyone is going to keep up to the times and the current "technological" environment we are living it, you could have expected it to be Estonia right?

Actually, this is the most likely place for a program like this to start. Estonia likely doesn't have to go through a treachery of government hoops to get a pilot education program approved and can remain much more flexible within their institutionalized platforms.

Kids coding is a great idea in my opinion...


And it should be a requirement for all children these days. All jobs these days require a computer at some level and if we are forcing to learn about 17th century history, then why should they be learning about a computer and how to benefit from it.

If school is intended to prepare someone for a "future" of success, then wouldn't you want them learning relevant information that will promote success.

Russia is also making MAJOR educational headway...


Russia is also making some forward progress as they are introducing an pilot education program (to certain grades only) where they are granting every student a two sided tablet computer and all their work is submitted through the computer. Even learning how to write can be done through the computer.

All the parents can see what their sons or daughters are accomplishing and the teachers can offer support and lessons through the computers via communication platforms.

Ingenious right? I think so.

The PROBLEM: Technology is moving faster than people in charge.


The main problem that I fear is that while other countries are able to facilitate this sort of "evolution" within our education system, within many of the more developed countries the educational improvement is not going to happen as quickly.

It could take a year to switch between pink and white erasers in our schools!

In fact, it is going to take decades for this to happen without the proper leadership and because of the strong government bureaucracies that think they know what is best for students. By this time it may be too late. Other education systems will be far more advanced and the global competitiveness (and intelligence) of countries like US, Canada, UK and many of the countries in Europe are going to continue to slide.

So, do I think that you are smarter than a 1st grader? Probably. That is not a good thing though...the students of early education should be learning things in school that are far more advanced and "with the times" than things that we had to learn in school.

What are your thoughts?


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Recent Comments

35

My experience - it has been introduced in the last two years the computer communication. Yes assignments are submitted through and parents are able to view complete assignments. This to me is remarkable I know what's happening in the week not the semester. I love computers but wonder if it's harming the basics. Writing, adding, thinking lol. Curriculums need to be followed and discussions on better learning strategies seem to take alot of the energy people have to offer. Schooling is difficult from what I have experienced.

The problem is that I think they are teaching things that are NOT the basics. They are teaching history. They are teaching very little that is actually applied. And they are not teaching much in the way of creativity.

I do agree that writing, math, communication, science, creativity and COMPUTERS are quintessentially to child development these days and will prepare them for the real world. Problem also resides in the fact that teachers are not capable of teaching "real world" principles and those that are have immediate constraints from the system.

As Yeats said "education is not filling a pail, it is lighting a fire". Merely changing what subjects we teach will not solve the problem. I agree that getting government and unions out of schools so that innovative methods of motivating students can be implemented. Not only must we instill the willingness to learn in each student, we must also instruct each how to learn. This is "lighting the fire."

Yes, I would never argue this point. Kids are going to be taught to learn, regardless of the material. The problem is the material is becoming dated and "most" education systems are not keeping up with the real world.

As the work force changes, so will education, but probably not fast enough to keep up.. many of the main stays I grew up with no longer apply. Who would have ever thought you would not need a telephone in your house, more or less that you could take it with you everywhere you went. Ahh, the times, they are a changen, if only Bob had any idea, then again, maybe he did!

And who would have thought that you would not need to go to a meeting to be in a meeting....or travel to Europe to hang out with people in Europe. I agree that our surroundings evolve far more quickly than education and this has truly been the case with the Internet these days. Hopefully with some leadership we can get a handle on this or our children are going to be left in the dust by countries that adopt technology.

I would agree with teaching our kids useful information such as financial education, coding, computers etc. I learned coding at a young age but were talking DOS and DBase here which isn't really used anymore so will the coding learned today still be around tomorrow?

The technologies will always change, but once you learn programming in any language, it is easier to pick up a second language right? Java at the core would teach kids the principles of every language and I can't honestly see things like mySQL and PHP going anywhere (or the LAMP stack for that matter), rather evolving in the way people are using them. They are open source afterall.

Very thought provoking! The wheels of government always moves slow! Makes a person want to have their kids in a private school setting!

A rancher friend of mine had his 2 daughters in a private school in the 90's and they used the latest technologies available to accomplish many things! They used speech recognition software, online chalkboards and so forth.

The education these two daughters received was so far superior to anything they could have gotten in the public school setting!

All kids can't afford private school, that is the problem. Why can't public institutions evolve a little quicker if the private ones are. Too many people that think they know what's best!

I think the more we can teach them the better. I personally think more schools should teach children foreign languages since they have an easier time picking them up than adults do.

Yeah, very true. In Canada, French is required to learn until Grade 8. Although this doesn't create fluency, it gives people an understand of languages. Coding is no different, those are languages. It would be really easy to put this in perspective for kids...this is how your favorite site was created or this is how your mobile app was created.

We'll, I lve in Italy, which is in troubled Europe.
For what I can see here, we are all out of the mainstream of technology developments since many years already and the biggest problem is that not only the political establishment is reluctant to make changes. European peoples are also quite conservative, unfortunately we don't have anymore that fresh mindset that younger countries like US, Brasil and India or countries like Estonia, that wants to fill the gap gained from the soviet era, have.
We carry the burden of a too long history, people think it's somebody else turn to "make" history.
It's said, Rome started to decay when it had to recruit barbarians for its army since romans didn't want to go to war anymore, they were too busy with dinners, partys and games at Coliseum.
We have tablets, fast cars, sophisticated garments but we have to rely more and more on immigrants for ordinary jobs that we don't like no more; we are too busy with...frivolities.
So you can guess how the end of the story will taste: bitter.
That (much) said, I can only agree with what you say and I will do my best to influence as much people as I can to share the same worries and to force them to take action.

Yeah, being in Italy last year for a month I did notice that the people there seemed pretty relaxed, almost to relaxed lol. I loved it there, but unfortunately if you do not encourage the young people to evolve, innovate and create you are going to be left behind in the fast moving world of technology (which will continue to drive more and more business going forward. )

That code seemed to be a bit advanced for a first grader. Perhaps a second grader. :)

I heartily concur that basic computer education should be started in grade school. But with the amount of advancement that has occurred perhaps basic coding is not the right way. I suppose it is just like math though. Before you use the calculator, you need to know how to do the calculations.

There is no doubt in my mind that the current school environment is holding kids back from learning at their greatest potential. I like the model from the Vulcan school that Spock had in one of the Star Trek movies. Saturate their brains with all the information that is available and see what bubbles to the top.

Oh and I trained my kids in hex. Not binary. Although they get confused when all I say is 1395.

They could probably start off with some statements in elementary.

If the apple is RED, eat it. If not, throw it in the compost.

I am sure there are some very creative ways to teach children languages but the earlier we get them adopted and understanding how a good portion of our daily activities are really functioning (behind the scenes), the better prepared they will be for the future (and I think the more creative they will be).

I always thought school was to teach you to think and to provide you with opportunities to find out what you're good at that can make you money and teach you how to handle money and yourself.

It makes perfect sense to me that coding would be taught in elementary school. They should teach about money (making it and using it once you've made it).

Someone once asked a bunch of 2nd or 3rd graders, I don't remember, what most wanted to be when they grow up. There were the firefighters and doctors and policemen but most wanted to be entrepreneurs (i.e., their answers had this in common: they wanted to create something; no one said, I want to work for a bank or I want to work in a bakery store... There was someone who wanted to make cookies and watch people eat his cookies in his store).

Maybe it was a special group of kids???

I remember when I was younger, I wanted to be a professional athlete...a form of entrepreneurship and one that required a ton of work. Unfortunately I didn't do a good part of my growing until I was out of high school so that was not a reality. I do think that this vision may have contributed towards what I do today.

I think that this is a unique group of kids, but it may be more common today. Working for someone else isn't as glamorous as it once was and definitely not as secure. If people would only learn about money at an early age there would be far less debt issues, the fact of the matter is that most people don't understand money (even those that think they do).

I speak to my kids in Binary..
Although they get confused when all I say is 1001110010101.. lol

Great Post!

I suppose that you are teaching them to fill out punched cards then instead of learning how to write.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_programming_in_the_punched_card_era

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