I picked up a brief guide to programming in 6th grade. There, on page 1, was A = A + 1. I knew that wasn’t possible, so I put it down, and came back to programming in 7th grade.
Khan Academy is having better luck with young students, but learning to program is kind of like learning to drive: the prerequisites aren’t obvious, but they’re helpful and often come later. At Fluent 2014, Pamela Fox explored the data Khan Academy has collected on learner age, and what it might mean for curricula going forward.
In her keynote, Fox explored:
- What the world might look like if JavaScript were part of the curriculum as early as possible. (1:42)
- Developing a sense of how kids respond to fairly easy challenges with Khan Academy’s participant data. (3:24)
- What in the first programming challenge might keep people from succeeding? (4:37)
- How different is the data for a logic challenge? At what age does completion level off? (6:16)
- What might JavaScript skills enable in a high school curriculum? (8:24)
While it’s not at all clear to me that everyone should learn to code, Fox makes it clear that it’s possible to overcome the challenges involved at a relatively early age. Khan Academy’s self-driven model is very different from classrooms, appealing more to self-starters and providing a different kind of guidance, but educators of all kinds should explore the possibilities explored here.
Editor’s note: If you’re familiar with the basics and want to take a deeper dive into JavaScript, check out Speaking JavaScript, by Axel Rauschmayer.