For the last two years I have been teaching programming to 8 year old children, Designers and Myself. Here is what I have learnt.
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When I tell people I teach 8-year-old children, they make a shocked expression and assume the plight of an unwilling child learning something very complicated and very boring being forced by over-bearing parents burdening their kids with unwanted classes. In an overly competitive atmosphere there is a rush of parents trying to make sure their child learns to program as it is one of the top paying skill sets to have today. I wonder how different the conversation would have gone if I had said I teach children chess or art. I think we have a great time and this is one of the more interesting jobs I have had.
Any field is built through many generations. Humanity has a certain narrative and timeline through which it learnt about everything in this universe. There is also a layer of learning where you go deeper into a subject, more microscopic, keep asking another why. Chemistry happens because of the exchange of electrons but perhaps it is not the right place to introduce someone to chemistry. Computer science also has its own layers where we have a history of computers and also we can understand computers by understanding the individual units that make up a computer. How to decide where is the right place to start teaching the subject?
Teaching from a book or a particular syllabus may give structure to the way things are learnt but it also places a cap on the responsibility of the teachers. Does a teacher need to know something that is out of the syllabus? Learning will happen if the student is capable and interested and if the teacher is capable and interested. Where the minds of these two people meet is debatable and can we move this point. Is it your responsibility as a teacher to make things more interesting if a student is not interested? At what point do you decide this concept cannot be taught to this student because he is not interested in learning or he is incapable of learning it?
Decrease the amount of learning required to get to the point of functional interaction by increasing abstraction.
