Teaching your kids Computer Science

If you live here, it means that you’re not getting any help from your school in getting the little ones interested in Computer Science. By Computer Science, I don’t mean being able to use PowerPoint, Word and being able to browse the web. I mean being able to program computer, and eventually being good enough at it to make a living doing so.

Even schools like Agora or Europa, which allegedly have computer science programs as of ESO 4 (Grade 10) are typically Spanish in their approach, and spend a lot of time on description and memorization and not that much on actually learning how to program.

If you think that Grade 10 is too early, that was already three years into my computer science career, and the school I went to allowed me to attend a local university for extra enrichment.

So as an English speaking parent, probably the best you can do is many of the great online courses.

Math enrichment: Khan Academy

Basic programming: Scratch (a visual programming environment similar to Logo of old days)

More advanced: Hackety (thanks Josh)

Great e-book on learning Python for Kids: Snake Wrangling For Kids

Any other suggestions?

Not learning computer science in Catalunya

We were talking to a principal at a local school the other day, and I happen to ask about their computer science program in ESO (grades 7-10 for North Americans). He looked at me and said “Well, there’s no requirement for computer science in ESO in Catalunya.”

“What do you mean? I remember taking computer science in grade 8 about 25 years ago, but I guess that was not Spain.”

“Well, there is ‘technologia’, but that more like learning how to make a chair or how the engine of a car works.”

OMFG

The 44% youth unemployment rate doesn’t look so crazy anymore.

The only place in Spain that has optional computer science in ESO is are Basque countries. I’ve read other good things about the educational system there, and it is interesting that their unemployment rate is more like 10%.

Shorting English phrases in Spanish

I find it funny how Spanish people take English phrases, and then just use the adjective to describe the item. For example:

Web site –> un web

Skiing and Snowboarding –> esqui y snow

Playstation –> un play

Educating the next generation of cargo-cultists

If you ever read any of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, you will have encountered the famous “cargo cults”, where Pacific Islanders built imitations of landing strips, airplaines, etc, hoping that magically attract the wealth of more advanced cultures.

Of course, you could argue that Spain’s massive airport over-expansion is a more advanced form of cargo-cultism. It would be interesting to know exactly which magical rituals they were hoping to invoke by building an enormous (ironically slightly Easter-island like) statue of a corrupt Valencian politician next to the plane-less Castellon airport..

But enough about airports and airlines. It was just meant as an introduction to my son’s latest homework assignment.

“Today we are studying cameras in science!” he says.

“Great! So what have you learned?”

“Well, they have given us a sheet with a picture of a camera and all the names of the buttons and we need to memorize them. Flash, macro, zoom, show picture, power.”

“Do you know what flash is?”

“No.”

“Did they explain to you anything about how a camera works?”

“No”

“Did the teacher bring a camera to class?”

“No. Just the photocopies.”

“What about the button to take the picture?”

“Well we don’t need to learn that one, it doesn’t have any label”

And this is supposed to be one of the best schools in Spain.

Spanair and Spain’s harmful bankruptcy legislation

Spain managed to score a huge own-goal with the abrupt shutdown of Spanair. In a country that relies on tourism as a huge fraction of it’s GDP, the secondary damage to the tourist sector will be huge. The sad thing is that this is a lose-lose situation for everyone: tourists get stranded in Spain (or never come in the first place) and unsecured creditors will get little to nothing.

In the US, Spanair would have entered bankruptcy under “Chapter 13” last year, which would have allowed it to continue day-to-day as the owners, receivers and creditors figure out a way to either shrink, sell, renegotiate, etc in order to maximize the value for everyone. Only in the case where things were absolutely hopeless and there was no business value whatsoever, would the company have been liquidated.

Spain is different, of course. If you want the gory details, go here, but the executive summary is this:

A debtor in Spain would only resort to file a petition for suspension of payments or bankruptcy as a last measure, when it is generally too late to take effective actions for restructuring the business. Thus, most of the insolvency cases in Spain (including both suspension of payments and bankruptcy proceedings) end up with the liquidation of the debtor’s assets.

There you have it. Expect this to only get worse as companies are squeezed on one end by higher commodity prices, and by lower demand on the other. At the same time, debts increase and there is no way of restructuring other than liquidation.

The only action the Spanish government seems to have done is sue Spanair for not honoring their commitments to passengers, which seems like the ultimate in pointlessness.