Why all our kids should be taught how to code

为什么要让所有孩子学习编程?

英文原文摘自英国《卫报》：

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/mar/31/why-kids-should-be-taught-code

智少年翻译

　　有越来越多的舆论认为，我们对学校的孩子们的信息技术教育方法需要一场彻底的改革。在这里，约翰诺顿解释了问题所在，并发表了一篇革命性的行动宣言。

　　There is a growing consensus that the way children in schools are being taught information technology is in need of a radical overhaul. Here John Naughton explains the problem and offers a manifesto for revolutionary action.

   一场激烈的辩论已经在政府和其他地方展开——关于在学校的课程中，针对信息和通信技术（ICT），我们应该做什么？各种机构——英国皇家学会，学习技术协会，英国学校计算机教育机构（一个关注教师的基层组织）和英国计算机协会，仅从已经发布针对首相和教育部门的报告和讨论文件中举了4个例子。迈克尔.戈夫，教育部长，在最近的BETT技术大会上发表了一个令人深思的演讲，表明反思正在英国政府内部进行。同时，在森林的另一边，一些惊人的新产品正在开发中，例如，已经有一百万多人订购了Raspberry Pi，一款由剑桥大学极客们开发的，便宜，信用卡大小的电脑，上周已开始出货。

    A vigorous debate has begun – within government and elsewhere – about what should be done about information and communication technology (ICT) in the school curriculum. Various bodies – the Royal Society, the Association for Learning Technology, Computing at School (a grassroots organisation of concerned teachers) and the British Computer Society, to name just four – have published reports and discussion documents aimed at ministers and the Department for Education. Michael Gove, the education secretary, made an enigmatic speech at the recent BETT technology conference indicating that a rethink is under way in the bowels of Whitehall. Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, there are some astonishing developments happening – such as the fact that more than a million people have already placed orders for Raspberry Pi, the cheap, credit-card-sized computer developed by Cambridge geeks, which began shipping last week.

　　于是很多事情正在发生：有一种地壳构造板块移动的感觉。但随着大量重大的政策辩论，有很多别有用心的游说，和特殊请愿正在进行中。高校想要扭转申请计算机科学课程的人数下降的局面；游戏公司需要更多的程序员；政府希望更多的高科技创业企业；制造商希望学员能设计嵌入式系统；还有校长们想要更大的预算，更多的计算机实验室；等等。

    So something's happening: there's a sense of tectonic plates shifting. But as with most big policy debates, there's a lot of axe-grinding, lobbying and special pleading going on. Universities want to reverse the decline in applicants for computer science courses. Gaming companies want more programmers. The government wants more high-tech start-ups. Manufacturers want trainees who can design embedded systems. And head teachers want bigger budgets for even more computer labs. And so on.

　　在这一切中，被遗漏的却是一个远大的愿景。这就是我的镜头所向：

　　从小学起，无论是来自哪种背景，还是哪个角落的英国孩子，都应该有这样的机会：学习一些计算机科学的核心概念；了解计算思维；学习编程；并有机会在这些活动中达到更加卓越的级别。

　　What's missing from all this is a big vision. So here's my shot at one:
　　Starting in primary school, children from all backgrounds and every part of the UK should have the opportunity to: learn some of the key ideas of computer science; understand computational thinking; learn to program; and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of excellence in these activities.

　　我们很快会知道为什么这是重要的和必要的，但首先我们需要面对一个痛苦的事实。那就是我们在过去的二十年里，信息技术教育在英国的学校几乎都被误导，很大程度上是徒劳的。我们没有教育年幼的孩子最革命性的技术，我们把重点放在训练他们使用过时的软件产品。我们这样做是因为我们陷入了哲学家吉伯特·赖尔所说的“范畴错误” -– 即错误地把一类东西描绘得好像他们是属于另一类。我们错误地认为，学习计算机就像学习开车，因为了解内燃机技术并不是成为一个熟练的司机的必要条件，于是，理解计算机是如何工作的，也对我们的孩子不重要。这类错误的最经典例子就是被大肆吹嘘的“资格证”，称为“欧洲电脑使用执照”。

   We'll get to why this is important and necessary in a moment, but first we need to face up to a painful fact. It is that almost everything we have done over the last two decades in the area of ICT education in British schools has been misguided and largely futile. Instead of educating children about the most revolutionary technology of their young lifetimes, we have focused on training them to use obsolescent software products. And we did this because we fell into what the philosopher Gilbert Ryle would have called a "category mistake" – an error in which things of one kind are presented as if they belonged to another. We made the mistake of thinking that learning about computing is like learning to drive a car, and since a knowledge of internal combustion technology is not essential for becoming a proficient driver, it followed that an understanding of how computers work was not important for our children. The crowning apotheosis of this category mistake is a much-vaunted "qualification" called the European Computer Driving Licence.

   但我们忘记了车子并没有在整个世界运转着，监视着我们的通讯，为我们的手机充电，管理着我们的银行帐户，记录着我们的日记，调谐着我们的社会关系，窥探着我们的社会活动，甚至在一些国家，计算我们的选票。但网络计算机正在做这些所有的事情，而且除此之外，还有很多很多。

    What we forgot was that cars don't run the world, monitor our communications, power our mobile phones, manage our bank accounts, keep our diaries, mediate our social relationships, snoop on our social activities and even – in some countries – count our votes. But networked computers do all of these things, and a lot more besides.

   所以我们需要承认“ICT（信息通信技术）在学校”已经成为了带毒的标志。我们要换一个名称，是相关学科的，理性地可持续的，改善学生生活的。想要一个更好的名字，让我们叫它计算机科学。这是一个总称，包括两个不同的领域。第一个是一些关键的概念，非常需要学生了解的，是关于他们成长所处的网络世界。第二是，计算机科学是一种新的解决问题的思考方式：这就是所谓的计算思维，它是关于人类和人工智能之间的区别，以及递归式思维，对风险的警惕、预防、检测和保护的思想，在处理大型任务时，利用抽象和分解，和运用启发式推理，迭代、搜索来发现解决复杂问题的方案。

   So we need to admit that "ICT in schools" has become a toxic brand. We have to replace it with a subject that is relevant, intellectually sustaining and life  enhancing for students. For want of a better name, let us call it computer science. This is an umbrella term that covers two distinct areas. First a set of key concepts that are essential if schoolchildren are to understand the networked world in which they are growing up. And second, computer science involves a new way of thinking about problem-solving: it's called computational thinking, and it's about understanding the difference between human and artificial intelligence, as well as about thinking recursively, being alert to the need for prevention, detection and protection against risks, using abstraction and decomposition when tackling large tasks, and deploying heuristic reasoning, iteration and search to discover solutions to complex problems.
 
    至于学生应该了解哪些关键的概念，会有很多有趣的讨论，这里有个也许适合初学者的清单。孩子们需要知道：算法（编程所采用的数学方法）；密码学（如何在网上保护机密信息）；机器智能（服务商如亚马逊，谷歌怎样估测你的喜好）；计算生物学（遗传基因是怎么运作的）；搜索（如何在网络大海里面捞针）；递归（一种算法，对一个大型复杂问题的解决方案，取决于在较小规模的情况下，同样问题的解决方案）；以及启发式推理（基于经验的解决，学习，并发现的技术）。

    There will be lots of interesting discussions about the key concepts that students will need to understand, but here's one possible list for starters. Kids need to know about: algorithms (the mathematical recipes that make up programs); cryptography (how confidential information is protected on the net); machine intelligence (how services such as YouTube, NetFlix, Google and Amazon predict your preferences); computational biology (how the genetic code works); search (how we find needles in a billion haystacks); recursion (a method where the solution to a problem depends on solutions to smaller instances of the same problem); and heuristics (experience-based techniques for problem-solving, learning, and discovery).

   如果这些概念对大部分读者来说是晦涩难懂的，这是因为我们生活在一个文化氛围，它已经系统地对他们，以及他们的后代，屏蔽了这些概念。在这个意义上，CP斯诺所说的“两种文化”正鲜活地，很好地存在于英国（智少年补充： 1959年英国科学家和小说家CP Snow曾经警告过；科学和艺术正在成为“两种文化”）。如果你认为他们太复杂，不适合教小的孩子，那是因为你从来没有见过有才华和有想象力的教师是怎样完成他们的工作。事实上，许多30来岁的英国读者小时候就已被教授递归，因为曾经，许多英国学校教孩子使用LOGO语言编程，让儿童学习指示机器龟进行复杂的动作。但最终，大多数学校放弃了教LOGO编程，而倒退地训练孩子使用微软的Word。

    If these concepts seem arcane to most readers, it's because we live in a culture that has systematically blindsided them to such ideas for generations. In that sense, CP Snow's "Two Cultures" are alive and well and living in the UK. And if you think they are too sophisticated to be taught to small children, then that's because you've never seen gifted and imaginative teachers go to work on them. In fact many UK readers in their 30s will have been exposed to recursion, for example, because once upon a time many UK schools taught Logo programming, enabling children to learn how a mechanised turtle could be instructed to carry out complex manoeuvres. But in the end most of those schools gave up teaching Logo and moved backwards to training kids to use Microsoft Word.

   偶然地，LOGO编程的故事提供了一个很好的例子，来说明为什么教孩子写电脑程序，是任何新的计算机科学课程的一个不可分割的部分。原因是，要帮助人们理解如递归或算法等概念，最好的方法就是让人们自己写代码，来实现这些概念。这就是为什么最近出现一句时髦的口头禅--“代码–-新的拉丁语”是相当愚昧无根据的。这句话暗指，编程是一个吸引人，但基本没用的，和可选的技能。 拉丁语是有趣的，但死的语言；计算机代码却是网络生活的行话，而且，像基因，是可以复制重用的。

    Incidentally, the Logo story provides a good illustration of why teaching kids to write computer programs has to be an integral part of any new computer science curriculum. The reason is that there's no better way of helping someone to understand ideas such as recursion or algorithms than by getting them to write the code that will implement those concepts. That's why the fashionable mantra that emerged recently – that "code is the new Latin" – is so perniciously clueless. It implies that programming is an engaging but fundamentally useless and optional skill. Latin is an intriguing, but dead, language; computer code is the lingo of networked life – and also, it turns out, of genetic replication.

   关于这个新课程的热烈争论的另一个误区是，它是以经济因素作为主要理由的：我们需要更多的孩子了解这个东西，因为我们的“创意”产业需要新兵，可以编写代码的；而这又意味着我们的大学需要懂电脑的孩子们的稳定入学。这，是真的，当然，但这不是我们要对我们的教育系统作根本的改变的主要原因。

    Another misconception that is currently rife in the debate about a new curriculum is that the primary rationale for it is economic: we need more kids to understand this stuff because our "creative" industries need an inflow of recruits who can write code, which in turn implies our universities need a constant inflow of kids who are turned on by computers. That's true, of course, but it's not the main reason why we need to make radical changes in our educational system.

   要改变的最大的理由不是经济上的，而是道德上的。那就是，如果我们现在不采取行动，我们将会来不及改变我们的孩子。他们生活的世界，充满了物理，化学，生物学和历史，所以我们希望他们理解这些东西，这是正确的。但是他们的世界也充满和配置了很多计算机网络，如果他们没有深入了解这个东西，那么他们实际上会成为智力残疾人。他们将会成为封闭的设备和服务的被动消费者，导致生活被越来越多的技术所限制，那些技术是由那些在像谷歌、facebook等大公司工作的精英所创造的。而我们，实际上，是繁殖下一代的仓鼠，在马克扎克伯格这类人建造的，有着闪闪发光的轮子的笼子里。

   （智少年补充：马克·艾略特·扎克伯格（Mark Elliot Zuckerberg），20岁时创办美国社交网站Facebook，被人们冠以“第二盖茨”的美誉。哈佛大学计算机和心理学专业辍学生。）

   The biggest justification for change is not economic but moral. It is that if we don't act now we will be short-changing our children. They live in a world that is shaped by physics, chemistry, biology and history, and so we – rightly – want them to understand these things. But their world will be also shaped and configured by networked computing and if they don't have a deeper understanding of this stuff then they will effectively be intellectually crippled. They will grow up as passive consumers of closed devices and services, leading lives that are increasingly circumscribed by technologies created by elites working for huge corporations such as Google, Facebook and the like. We will, in effect, be breeding generations of hamsters for the glittering wheels of cages built by Mark Zuckerberg and his kind.

   那是我们想要的吗？当然不是。那么，让我们开始吧。

   Is that what we want? Of course not. So let's get on with it.

=== *** === *** === *** === *** === *** === *** === *** ===

深圳“IT小达人”培训班，3月15日开课啦，免费试听，欲报从速哦！

全国统一服务电话：400-623-0302
网站： http://www.wiseyouth.net
微信号：wiseyouth , 或“智少年”。
欢迎给我们发微信，我们会尽快回复

　　智少年培训独家原创，版权所有，转载请注明出处。