I had a good Teacher in my high school class, AP Computer Science. He recognised my self-teaching ability and allowed me to explore on my own, and answered questions by loaning me his own college texts (including Knuth).

I thought to myself that nobody learns "programming" in class, while in College. Rather, we learn languages and skills, but the inate ability must be self-taught and developed as a skill. It's just like playing the clarinet: you have to do it and practice it.

What's too early? I think kids might not have the required abilities before some age, but I don't know what that is. Also, could certainly teach pre-programming skills before the "real thing" as the child develops in different stages.

OTOH, teaching Computer Literacy is very necessary for all those who don't take an active interest in it.


In reply to Re: Computer Education in Public Schools by John M. Dlugosz
in thread Computer Education in Public Schools by dystrophy

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.