I was always an "English kid", came close to failing my math subjects in middle school and finally in high school, I did fail Algebra I, and had to re-take it the next year. Meanwhile, I was in advanced programming courses and on my way to take an AP Computer Science course in the last semester of my sophomore year. Looking back, that experience taught me about how important modeling is to pedagogy. The fact is, my Algebra I teacher couldn't model the problem for me. He never explained anything, just expected us to memorize everything. We were never given real, tangible examples (contrived word problems don't count and never did!)...all we did was take stupid tests. My high school math experience was like a crash course in everything that's wrong with STEM education in America, and why we need to alter that if we're going to depend more on STEM in the real world.
In my opinion, programming has always been a form of writing. Just like songwriting is a form of writing. It's simply a different medium, and therefore you get a different result.
I might be looking at it from a different kind of lens though.
> Looking back, that experience taught me about how important modeling is to pedagogy.
Very good point!
This is the strongest "pitch" for why one should learn math: the modelling superpowers one will acquire. Every function f(x) is a type of model (e.g. mx+b, x^2, e^x, ln(x), cos(x), |x|, etc.), and understanding the function f(x) will allow you to model any phenomenon that exhibits f(x)-like behaviour.
[note: I'm working on the web copy for a math book and trying to decide what to put above the fold to make the average Internet reader interested in math. So far the shortlist of pitches are (1) learn math easily because the book is short and written in a chill tone, (2) destroy your calculus and mechanics exams (for students), (3) get rid of math phobia (for English kids), and (4) gain modelling superpowers. So far I like (4) the best. What do y'all think? Any feedback would be much appreciated. ]
"gain modelling superpowers" makes no sense to someone who doesn't already understand what modelling is and how is can be used. It is also a comical idea to try to market a book toward students these days - getting even a high school student to read anything longer than a few sentences in one sitting is a miracle.
> a comical idea to try to market a book toward students these days
I agree with you generally, but if you compare with the current math textbooks (that students are usually forced to buy) you will concede there is a lot of room for improvement on the textbook side.
Also, while I think technology might be cool to play with, nothing beats the book as a medium for the transmission of information.
I did very well at English at school, but failed hard at maths whilst freelancing from home after teaching myself PHP.
I really wish I'd engaged (and was taught) maths in the same way as I did with code - I remember feeling quite annoyed at the way I was being taught maths which was basically "when you see a question asked in this way, you answer it by following these steps". I think if I'd been taught maths through experimentation and having "projects" to solve in the same way I learned to code, I would've been quite a good maths student.
I always felt like school-level English classes were very hazy, muddy environments where you didn't need to have clear thinking and the structures (the English language mainly) didn't strictly follow any internal logic, opposite math. Peers got good marks for presenting half-baked ideas in inarticulate, thesaurus-abused essays, as long as they made sure to repeat their limp argument, cut up into a specified number of points, in the extremely redundant structure imposed by the curriculum (say what you're going to say, say it, then say what you said, with different synonyms each time) and use different joining-words or whatever term they used for obnoxiously putting "also" "further" etc. at the start of every new paragraph. Intellectual laziness was rewarded by the system, purposefully or not.
Those classes probably turned off a sad number of would-be good writers from learning how to write creatively, efficiently, or even reasonably. I had exactly one English teacher who was reasonable and only taught to these abominable standards as required by the state but let real writing be rewarded in other assignments; he understood the reality of the language and that the point of your writing should be moreso effectively articulating ideas, effecting desired emotional responses, or provoking thoughts rather than some nonsense a committee at the Department of Education decided is proper and that legions of English teachers across the country take to heart as dogma and revel in the sadism of. Otherwise, throughout the years it was splitting hairs over prescriptivist grammatical minutiae, the aforementioned ridiculous essay structure, memorizing obsolete Shakespearen-era "vocabulary words" that no writer writing for a living audience would even consider using, and going on about how any grammatical structure or word that appeared after 1900 is objectively wrong.
I could have put much less effort into them than I did and still gotten As but I preferred to use them as an exercise in trying to work good writing around the myriad deeply-rooted problems in how I was forced to present it. That's the only bonus point I can give to it as a learning environment.
English classes in college have just been the same disappointment with a different mask on for the most part, except for exposure to real research methods, but still lag behind the real world in forcing you to use non-internet sources.
I also disliked the emphasis on literary analysis. It so often seemed like contrived flimflammery crossed with psychoanalytic mumbo-jumbo. If tvtropes (or allthetropes) had existed back then, I think I would have performed much better on my English homework. After all, those sites do include the Jungian archetypes and the basic plots as a subset.
As it is, my high school English classes drove me far away from anything even remotely similar until a lifetime of reading fiction, a shameful amount of blathering on Internet message boards, and the exhortations of the "National Novel-Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)" organization convinced me to try to write a novel in November of 2012. Two years later, I have written 500 kb, with maybe 130 kb left to go before I snap it off and start the next one. Then there's also the matter of the default HTML stylesheet, continuity notes and timelines, the character, vehicle, location, and artifact indices, working hyperlinks, and testing the release version on all available e-reader programs and devices.
As for my old English teachers, I bite my thumb at them, like Sampson. I give them the fig, like Vanni Fucci. And just as golf is a good walk, spoiled, English class is a good read, ruined. Even with those ancient cultural references rattling around my bonebox, I find that an increasingly large fraction of my memes are drawn from television, film, music, video games, and popular web sites, and a vanishingly small portion from the old literary canon.
That's how I know that the Belmonts love Devo. If you understand why, you probably won't need to thank an English teacher.
All I really ever needed was a pile of books that I enjoyed reading and a copy of Strunk and White (minus the part about always putting sentence punctuation inside the quotes, because that's just madness). What I got was about 10 years of pedagogical torture that discouraged me from trying something that turned out to be a fun hobby.
Somewhat related is a recently published book by Angus Croll called If Hemingway Wrote Javascript[0]. It's not so much about Javascript as it is about the writing styles of great authors and the expressiveness inherent in writing code.
In my opinion, programming has always been a form of writing. Just like songwriting is a form of writing. It's simply a different medium, and therefore you get a different result.
I might be looking at it from a different kind of lens though.