[Edu-sig] Learning (some more) programming

[John Zelle]

On Thursday 28 December 2006 12:51 pm, Ian Bicking wrote:
> Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> > Ian Bicking wrote:
...

> > If kids wants to get at the stories (or other knowledge) locked in books,
> > that motivates them to spend the fifty hours or so of hard work to get to
> > the point where they have the key and can then bootstrap themselves to a
> > high level of reading skills through practice. Similarly, the key to
> > learning to write well is to have something to say (even just a request
> > for a toy to buy or an "I love you" note) and then to do it -- even if
> > the first results are idiosyncratic and misspelled and ungrammatical.
>
> I offer keyboarding as a counterexample.  It's not all that uncommon
> that I find someone who uses computers a great deal who cannot touch
> type, because they learned to type as they needed to.  Obviously no one
> (or at least very few people) learn keyboarding out of a genuine love
> for the craft of typing.  But if you only learn typing in the natural
> way you end up with a self-limited skill; at some point it just about
> everyone *should* sit down and learn to touch type.  Clearly without
> excellent typing skills you could not properly participate in these long
> winded discussions ;) (But I suppose one could argue poor typing makes
> you a better writer ;)

I'll be keeping this reply very short, as I never learned to touch type. My 
keyboarding style is, at best, idiosyncratic.  I'd score that one for Paul, 
based on my experience. I never "learned to type." I just do it.

> > Nothing is more likely to make children not want to read or write than
> > following standard pedagogical advice and breaking reading into a series
> > of incremental hoops (learn letters, learn words, learn simple sentences,
> > and so on) which is just going to bore most kids out of their skulls. Can
> > you imagine if we tried to teach kids to listen to spoken language and to
> > talk that way? Thankfully, kids learn to listen and talk on their own by
> > just absorbing language in their environment and trying to use it to
> > accomplish  goals meaningful to themselves.

Here, things get a little silly. Is there really evidence that children who 
are motivated to read (say because their parents read to them) are somehow 
then de-motivated by having that skill taught to them in a sane way? And yes, 
I'm afraid there is research showing that it's sane. Children who already 
know their letters pick up reading faster than those who don't. Starting with 
simple sentences leads to faster learning than starting with Shakespeare, and 
the best way to quickly enhance reading is to tackle "graded" texts that are 
at about 75% comprehension. Any easier than that, and you are not learning 
anything new. Harder than that, you don't have enough scaffolding to figure 
out new constructs from the context (since the context makes no sense).  Not 
only is that common sense, I believe it's supported by 
_actual_reading_research_.  I might also add that around my house those 
incremental "hoops" are themselves bringers of much delight. Successfully 
learning the alphabet is a source of joy to children.

However, I really want to weigh in on the second point of this paragraph, as 
it brings up a faulty analogy I often see in educational debates (even those 
surrounding programming ;-). I have considerable background in the areas of 
learning and language acquisition (specifically machine learning for natural 
language). The consensus of modern linquists is that learning to speak is 
almost nothing like learning to read (or driving or programing or...you name 
it). Learning to speak is in your genes. We are adapted through evolution to 
be a speaking species. Our ability to learn language is so innate and acute 
that it's arguably best thought of as a "speech organ" or "language instinct" 
(see Steven Pinker's excellent book of that title). No normal child fails to 
learn speech in _any_ culture, even those that Ian points out below do not 
necessarily encourage it. Learning to speak is an inevitable developmental 
phenomena that requires only exposure to speech at an appropriate age. 
Just like children don't need to be taught to recognize their mother's face, 
they do not have to be "taught" to speak.

Skills such as reading, writing, mathematics, and programming are not innate. 
In fact, even with great effort, many people do not learn to read well. There 
are precious few self-taught readers. The analogy to speech just doesn't cut 
it. It's even less appropriate for considerations of writing and mathematics. 
Even learning a second language after a certain age (around puberty) simply 
does not (and cannot) happen the way we learn our first language as children. 
Second language learning draws on different cognitive mechanisms. So all 
those language courses that promise you can learn effortlessly the way a 
child learns language are just blowing smoke.

> Kids are also cute and enjoyable, and adults sing them silly songs and
> mouth out words and do all sorts of things to help them learn to talk.
> Being around a baby and some toddlers these days, learning to talk is
> clearly not effortless for anyone involved.
>
> In cultures where children receive less direct attention when they are
> learning to talk, they *do not talk as well or as soon*.
>

They may not talk as soon. The evidence is that they will end up talking just 
as well as the rest of us. And it's not even clear that their acutal language 
(comprehension) skills are delayed. These cultures just aren't interested in 
having young children speak, so they don't.
...

> Teaching is central to the idea, but it is decentralized insofar as it
> doesn't expect or rely upon a professionalized set of teachers, and that
> success in the system depends on children becoming teachers themselves.
>   Part of the community structure is to help those children become
> *good* teachers, by teaching each other how to teach.

Teaching at its heart is really just good communication. Part of communication 
is making sure you have a receptive audience, that's where I see all the 
various discussion of things like enthusiasm and internal vs external 
motivations. And I think Arthur's original post about taking on interested 
learners, vs. getting them interested is an important distinction to think 
about. BUT. The second part of communication is providing the right 
information that will most effectively communicate. Teachers have been 
teaching for many centuries now. We know a lot about how children learn, and 
many ideas that have been demostrated through both experience and research 
are now standard parts of educational curriculum. Now, I'd be the first to 
admit that I have very little patience with a lot of so-called educational 
research, but finding better teaching methods can (and should be) an 
empirical, scientific process. I have _no_ patience for the "everything we're 
doing now is just plain wrong" crowd. These sorts of claims are seldom backed 
up by any evidence except vague hand-waving and appeals to ideology 
(centralized, hierarchical BAD, unstrutured GOOD, "coercion" BAD, voluntary 
GOOD, lecture BAD,  contructionism GOOD), or false analogies (kids should 
learn to read the same way they learn to speak).

Can we improve education? Almost certainly. But I'm sure we can also make it 
much, much worse.  Before we throw out the bathwater, let's see what's 
actually in it.

--John

-- 
John M. Zelle, Ph.D.             Wartburg College
Professor of Computer Science    Waverly, IA     
john.zelle at wartburg.edu          (319) 352-8360