I think that it is this factor "more arbitrary gunk to memorise"
which more than anything else contributes to making computer languages
hard to learn. - Laura Creighton
%
Decades ago, high school students heading for college were taught Latin.
Teaching this dead language helped teach students more about how languages
are structured. To a small degree, computer programming is an opportunity
to replace this lost art. - Michael McLay, April 2004
%
The more anomalies you've seen, the more easily you'll notice new ones.
Which means, oddly enough, that as you grow older, life should become
more and more surprising. When I was a kid, I used to think adults had
it all figured out. I had it backwards. Kids are the ones who have it
all figured out. They're just mistaken. - Paul Graham, September 2004
%
School is like starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which
bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school
and win awards doing it. I should know. - John Taylor Gatto, 1991
%
After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches,
I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius
only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of
educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious.
Let them manage themselves. - John Taylor Gatto, 2001
%
*My* reaction to somebody telling me I've got a brick on my pencil is
going to be, "Goody! Where is it?" I'm both lazy and perfectionistic,
so if there's a better/faster/easier way to do something I'm doing,
by golly I want to know about it.
 - Phillip J. Eby, dirtSimple.org, January 2005
%
Whether or not computers are used in school is a trifle compared to
fixing the basic assumptions and design that make schools a poor place
for learning. It's not that they fail at helping children learn, it's
that helping children learn is not even a goal of school.
 - Dethe Elza, April 2005
%
Two other publishers turned us down for the [Head First] series
before O'Reilly took the chance. And I was nearly fired from Sun
for trying to sneak 5% of what's in Head First into Sun courseware.
 - Kathy Sierra, September 2005
%
Speaking as a student of life, I certainly play a lot (today I learned to
do a headstand!). Googling topics, reading, and intellectually engaging in
activities are routine parts of everyday. As an adult, I greet this state
of wonder for its interesting, fruitful, and growth producing interactions.
 - Danielle Strachman, October 2005
%
Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
 - Thomas H. Huxley
%
Sure enough, the bloggers and the ignorant have already begun to spit
on the XO laptop. "Dude, for $400, I can buy a real Windows laptop,"
they say. Clearly, the XO's mission has sailed over these people's
heads like a 747. - David Pogue, New York Times, October 2007
%
The XO laptop, now in final testing, is absolutely amazing,
and in my limited tests, a total kid magnet. Both the hardware
and the software exhibit breakthrough after breakthrough - some
of them not available on any other laptop, for $400 or $4,000.
 - David Pogue, New York Times, October 2007
%
The [European] Parliamentary Assembly therefore urges the member states,
and especially their education authorities: [...] to firmly oppose the
teaching of creationism as a scientific discipline on an equal footing
with the theory of evolution and in general resist presentation of
creationist ideas in any discipline other than religion.
 - European Parliament, resolution 1580 (2007)
%
Most countries still use something like the late 19th century Prussian
education system, the first to apply the principles of factory automation
and mass production to the classroom. The avowed purpose of this system
in Prussia was to keep the population in line while the rulers did what
they pleased. Its success was all too evident throughout the world during
almost the entire 20th century. - Edward Cherlin, March 2008
%
Public school textbooks represent a compromise between what various
powerful groups want kids to be told. The lies are rarely overt.
Usually they consist either of omissions or of over-emphasizing
certain topics at the expense of others. - Paul Graham, May 2008
%
Fortunately, once you arrive at adulthood you get a valuable new
resource you can use to figure out what lies you were told. You're now
one of the liars. You get to watch behind the scenes as adults spin
the world for the next generation of kids. - Paul Graham, May 2008
%
So, if freely offering a tool [OLPC] is an arrogant attempt at
control and conversion, what was the white-man's-burden logic behind
distributing Python? - Eric on Guido van Rossum's blog, November 2008
%
My experience with [mandatory indentation for teaching] has been so
overwhelmingly positive that /I will never again voluntarily use a
language without mandatory indentation for teaching novice programmers/.
 - Chris Okasaki, February 2008
%
Some advocates want to bring computer games into the classroom.
Meanwhile, some parents wish their children would play /less/
computer games. Now to me, these two groups should be natural allies,
not enemies. Once computer games are in the classroom, no student
will ever play them again for fun. - Clark Aldrich, August 2008