Spoiler alert: I’m about to do a whole load of advocacy for the devil…
Earlier this week, to much fanfare, Michael Gove announced planned changes to the current England and Wales ICT curriculum, moving focus away from training kids in how to use computer applications, and moving instead to teaching them the fundamentals of computer programming. This feels to me to be akin to, in the age of IKEA, training everyone in woodworking skills.
I’ve no doubt that a fundamental understanding of the ways and means of logic that underpins most computer programming would be of benefit to many. But the issue with computer skills, it seems to me, isn’t about understanding how to code per se, but how and when the application of code might be appropriate, and how to make it count. The world of traditional IT is littered with the well intentioned, well coded, yet poorly implemented corpses of systems intiatives of old. My limited exposure to the world of startups would indicate that programming skills aren’t the missing factor – decent business ideas and the skills to implement them are though.
I’m not here saying that we don’t need programmers. I just, fundamentally, don’t believe that we all need to be programmers, and that teaching programming as a skill doesn’t necessarily make us better purchasers, specifiers, producers or consumers of technology. To extend the IKEA analogy – we need to have the critical faculties to know when to purchase a table or bookshelf, the planning ability to successfully construct it, and the sense to not pick up every bit of plastic tat in the marketplace at the end that you neither need nor want. Sometimes we’ll need to know when to bring in a craftsperson to make something really special for us, and it would help to be able to talk in a language that means we get from them what we want. But we don’t all need to start making all of our furniture ourselves…
mmitII 