In primary school, we had Macs in the earlier years, and we were never taught to use them. So us kids would teach ourselves, and play all the fun games (remember spectre challenger?) and draw pictures (a la Kid Pix).

Later on in primary school, they “upgraded” to PC’s with Windows. Again, nothing was formally taught. The teachers were barely more computer literate than we were (some significantly less so). As such, I learnt most of my skills at home.

In High School, again there were no formal classes. We used them a bit in Maths, playing some lateral thinking and logic games (I maintain that ‘Maths Circus’ is fantastic), and a bit in Music, for compositions and audiatory training. Otherwise it was just “research” or word processing. At this point, it was assumed one could use a computer.

It saddens me that it’s pretty much a MS shop around here. One of the reasons for this is that MS gives away lots of software to schools. In the IT classes (an actual elective), they “teach” Visual Basic.

In an ideal world, students could be taught not so much how to use a particlar piece of software (eg: Windows, Photoshop, Word, etc) but rather, how to quickly pick up a tool and use it (eg: This is a GUI, so it will most likely behave like this). Most geeks achieve this meta-learning by themselves, but most users are intimidated by even a small change…

And in IT, they would start people with something a little less shallow. Even plain BASIC would be better (I started coding with QBASIC, hehe)… VB obfuscates the logic flow, and kids get distracted by the pretty bells and whistles of the GUI…

Yes most people aren’t going to use it for a job, but then I’m not going to use any geography or history – I still appreciate having learnt it and knowing about the world. And if they weren’t taught, I wouldn’t know whether I might be interested in them or not.

Debate is good and I always say that more philosophy should get taught. But debate as a replacement for science is dangerous, and sounds like the kind of thing the supporters of Intelligent Design would propose – muddying the picture and giving the impression that nothing is certain.

I didn’t know that the internationalization thing was common for everyone, that sounds like a very good idea.

Kids at Dutch high schools nowadays are, through internet chats, e-mail and certain websites, taking part in classes in which they are being brought in touch with their counterparts throughout the world. Which, with financial situations as they are right now, usually means elsewhere in the West. They will spend a great deal of time talking to people from other cultures in other languages and will, at least once, meet those other classes in real life. I think that is a new and absolutely fundamental aspect of modern education.