I just came across this article about the way ICT in the UK national curriculum short-changes children. The article is two months old, and I know things are moving on this front, with David Willetts’ announcement in September of the “Behind the Screen” initiative to steer the ICT curriculum further towards programming and software engineering. I do love this quote, though:

“… the curriculum is disabling rather than enabling for most kids, because it is preparing them for a technological world that is vanishing before their eyes.”

So, so true. Kids don’t just need to learn the features of specific software products; they need an understanding of computing fundamentals, and skills that they can apply to solve a range of different problems, not just the classroom examples. Tinkering with the BBC Micro offered that to a generation of British kids, and it would be wonderful if the Raspberry Pi could reignite the same spirit. Is John Naughton aware of the #codingforkids movement, I wonder?

Soon after I posted about Martin Rees’s ‘Schools for Science’ article, someone posted this link to one of my LinkedIn groups saying:

“Microsoft released a survey of college science, math and engineering majors this month that underscored differences between the motivations of male and female students. <...> Fifty-one percent of male majors said they chose their subject in part because of past experience with related games, toys, books, or clubs; for women that figure was only 35%. In contrast, 68% of women credited a particular high-school class or teacher with turning them on to the subject, compared with 51% for men.”

So, if we get more people learning their science and tech by informal, self- and community-directed methods, as I’m advocating, we might get an even greater gender gap in science and technology than we have now. That would be a pretty negative unintended consequence. Hmm … more to think about.

On Monday 19 September 2011, the Guardian published an article by Martin Rees about the importance of science education. It is important both for its own sake, because a certain level of scientific understanding ought to be part of our global cultural heritage, and because science education can provide young people with job-related skills. Up to that point it is easy to agree with him. More controversially, Rees then claims that young people’s natural enthusiasm and curiosity about the world around them is stifled by poor quality teachers at school.

Rees identifies an obstacle to teaching which my husband and I were talking about earlier today: rapid advancements in technology that put a greater distance, or more layers of complexity, between users and the technology they are using. We can’t dismantle an iPhone to find out how it works; we can no longer tinker under the bonnet of a car. Ten years ago, someone creating a personal website would probably have written some HTML directly; now we would create a Facebook page or a WordPress blog instead. Rees and my husband agree that these trends make it harder to engage young people with the basics of how things work. Rees concludes that high-quality teaching in schools is therefore more necessary than ever.

I see the argument that more sophisticated technology distances people from hands-on experimentation and practical learning, but I think it is futile to pin hopes for a ‘solution’ on recruiting higher quality teachers. Teachers are as affected by increased complexity as their pupils: we are all equally unable to demonstrate a principle of engineering by taking a gadget apart. Demanding ever-higher standards from teachers as Moore’s Law enables ever-smaller, more powerful black boxes will lead to an arms race that teachers can only lose.

I’d suggest altering our expectations to adjust to these realities. Instead of demanding that teachers carry on doing what they were doing before, only better, let’s look harder at new opportunities for teaching and learning that are opening up, not only to teachers but to all of us. Let’s think of education as something that doesn’t only happen inside institutions. Change always creates opportunities as it overturns familiar norms. Rees hints at this by mentioning citizen science projects such as Galaxy Zoo where images of galaxies are being classified by amateur astronomers: adults and children together. This initiative isn’t explicitly designed to involve young people, but doesn’t it create a wonderful chance for kids and young people to make tangible contributions to ambitious grown-up projects?

Purposeful collaboration with adults who are science and tech-aware, but not professional teachers, can surely be at least as inspiring as great classroom lessons. I don’t mean to minimise the impact that inspiring teachers can have; they can be wonderful. But not all children have access to great teachers, and talented graduates and mid-career professionals may prefer not to join the teaching profession, much as Martin Rees would like them to. They do have other opportunities to inspire kids, though! It’s up to adults who are science and tech-aware, not just teachers, to inspire a new generation to expand scientific knowledge. I’m going to learn more about other citizen science initiatives and look for ways to get involved.