Reply to post: Why IT Skills; What IT Skills?

Kids' tech skills go backwards thanks to tablets and smartmobes

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Why IT Skills; What IT Skills?

The particular study focused on a curriculum that was built around a software ecosystem that existed when it was proposed (i.e. several years before it was implemented). Software has moved on but the curriculum has not. The results are unsurprising.

The question is, why are you teaching IT skills to non-IT students and what skills do non-IT students need? Going back to the original IT breakthrough, writing, for the educated class, reading was important but, for millennia, writing was not. Similarly, breakthrough two, printing, had no skills that the educated class needed - few of the Enlightenment authors knew how to set type.

Today, while an IT student needs to know how to program, the average student doesn't. How to touch type is a generally useful skill. But, beyond that, things get specific, and can become outdated, real fast. Most students in the first world would benefit from being taught Word, Excel, and maybe PowerPoint but I don't see that as a priority (I'd put personal finance and cooking much higher).

What might make sense is to define programming as a foreign language. This would first require that universities accept it as fulfilling their language requirement for admission, but, to the extent that foreign languages serve to expand ways of thinking, vocabulary, and grammar, computer languages certainly qualify. And, who knows, it might actually turn some non-IT students towards real IT careers.

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