- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Maybe the reason programming isn't cool among kids these days is precisely because it is taught in school these days. And Brin is right when he says in his recent letter that it was only a few elite thousands, back in the day, who taught themselves how to program in BASIC when they were in grade school or high school. That was what made them cool, that they could do something that wasn't taught, and that most people couldn't do. They got together on their own. They called their get-togethers "Geek Fests" and they made the word "geek" as applied to themselves something to be proud of. They were indeed an elite.
And I agree with Brin that our schools need to teach, not so much the elite thousands, as the ordinary millions better, much better. Not only in computer-related skills but natural languages and literature and social sciences and physics and biology and *real* mathematics (including logic) and real trade skills, and real physical education: the whole lot. What Salon-reader could not agree with that? The problem is not the absence of needed programming tools, nor the plethora of easy things to do on a computer. The problem is that most schools don't get enough resources, enough teachers, enough of anything really. And I think most of us know the reasons for that.
