I am not convinced that “thinking algorithmically” (whatever it means and however it is related to coding) is correlated with success or happiness or any other useful metric. I am also not sure that teaching one to write simple programs is going to make them better at thinking about their life in a systematic way. It certainly does not do it to professional programmers, in my experience.
I’m not talking about a class that teaching introduction to programming. I mean a class about analyzing everyday problems in a step-wise fashion. Teaching children how to granularize problems instead of relying on just intuitively discovering the answer or failing. In my experience schools are failing horribly at this and the children who I coached in such basics of problem solving saw across the board academic improvements.
Thinking algorithmically should be a basic course taught in school. Many people muddle through a life filled with magic and not causation.
I am not convinced that “thinking algorithmically” (whatever it means and however it is related to coding) is correlated with success or happiness or any other useful metric. I am also not sure that teaching one to write simple programs is going to make them better at thinking about their life in a systematic way. It certainly does not do it to professional programmers, in my experience.
edit: I see that you were responding to the claim that coding specifically should be what is taught. I retract my objection to your objection.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-one-lifespan/201210/critical-thinking-and-real-world-outcomes
I’m not talking about a class that teaching introduction to programming. I mean a class about analyzing everyday problems in a step-wise fashion. Teaching children how to granularize problems instead of relying on just intuitively discovering the answer or failing. In my experience schools are failing horribly at this and the children who I coached in such basics of problem solving saw across the board academic improvements.