How to teach for developers

We spoke at DDD over the weekend in the Junior Devs track and it was an amazing opportunity. I was more nervous than I’m proud of, but it was our first conference talk, so maybe some nerves were warranted.

I spoke about ‘the Value of Latin’. I covered some of the ways Latin and coding are similar and how Latin has helped me as a developer, even though the links may not initially be obvious. Nimmo and I were scheduled in the same 45 minute bracket and she spoke immediately after me about the lessons you can take from teaching music and how you can apply them to teaching developers.

It turns out I can talk about Latin for way longer than I anticipated and I filled my twenty minutes with talking, leaving no time for questions. But Nimmo had better control of her content (though she, too, could fill at least an hour) and when she asked for questions after her talk, she included questions to me. One of the questions put to both of us has stayed with me. I didn’t know how to answer it at the time and made a joke, ‘I think everyone should learn Latin’.

The question was along the lines of ‘There is a lot of importance placed on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education at the moment, given both of you come from a humanities background, do you have an opinion about what should be taught in schools to improve developers?’

It became a bit of an audience discussion (we were in a small room and it was a very convivial bunch) until we ran out of time. As we were walking home after the event, Nimmo spoke about the importance of ‘breadth’ as an answer to that question. From my observations, watching kids go through high school, this is true. Yes, some kids thrive on delving deeply into one thing, but most kids benefit from a wide range of topics to get their teeth sunk into. Having a range of things that stretch your brain means your brain can go in a lot of different directions.

But you can’t point to a subject and say ‘this will make you a programmer’. It’s more useful to think about things like ‘breadth’. Where breadth is one of a number of underlying things that are more important to teaching and learning than what subjects you teach. The underlying things are simple, but that doesn’t mean they are always easy.

The most fundamental ones include not being hungry when you are trying to learn, and getting enough sleep. Everybody knows sleep and good nutrition are vital for learning. And if they are lacking, the reasons why they are lacking are usually harder to solve than changing what subjects are being taught at school. It doesn’t matter how many ‘power subjects’ you teach if a child is hungry. A brain needs sleep to learn. A well-rested brain is in a good place to take in information. And you don’t want kids falling asleep in class because they couldn’t or didn’t sleep the night before. A child who gets enough sleep and has a balanced diet has an advantage well beyond what teaching them Latin or music could bring.

I’d include doing sport as one of the underlying things that are pretty close to fundamental. I say this as a former little-fat-kid-who-always-got-picked-last for team sports, I loathed sports at school. I wasn’t coordinated, I couldn’t intuit the flow of a team sport, I hated running, but I believe some sort of sport is really important for kids. Whether you play netball or hockey or ultimate frisbee, or you dance or play pool or do powerlifting (which I’ve taken up recently and really love it [wait, is it safe for kids to take up power lifting? I don’t know, I’ll think of a different suggestion], swimming), physical activity helps you learn.

And still before you get to what content a student should learn, there is ‘learning how to learn’. It is far more important to teach children *how* to learn than it is to teach them *what* to learn. Educational institutions don’t change very quickly, and the tech world does. I suspect that companies will end up taking on education for the specific skills they need and schools will need to be a place where you foster a love for lifelong learning and give students the tools to pick up whatever new they need in life. It is vital to nurture students’ ability to play, which is the heart of lifelong learning. Faced with new technology, those who jump in and play with it to see what it can do are the ones who will learn it the fastest, whatever their age.

Learning how to learn is not a new idea and it was something that I was advised to focus on from the very start of my teaching career by veteran teachers. I found this hard to do, it is far easier to point to a vocab list and say ‘you need to know this’, but I believe in it. Combine it with teaching your kids to approach the world with a growth mindset, and I think they will meet with most challenges.

A growth mindset is one of the things that gives people a distinct advantage over those who don’t have it. We should be teaching students to have a growth mindset. I believed this when I was a teacher, but failed at doing it. One of my past students recently posted about discovering the concept of a growth mindset and how much it would have helped them at school and several of their classmates responded in the comments that it would have helped them too. I want to apologise to them, but I was so horrified with myself when I read it, I haven’t quite got there yet. I should have been more explicit.

The ability to focus deeply is another thing that will give students a competitive advantage, but it is not something I’m sure how to teach. It is something I can do, though I have become less good at it over time. Is that because of my smart phone? Probably. Is it all the things you have to keep track of to make life work when you have a full time job? Probably. I know there are some interesting things being done with gamification and getting kids to focus, but I have another whole post about what I think about gamification and education. Not games, to be clear, but gamification. As I mentioned, a sense of ‘play’ is vital to education, it feeds intrinsic motivation. Gamification promotes extrinsic motivation, which doesn’t feed life long learning.

It is no particular choice of subjects that will give kids the skill to be developers. In an ideal world, every kid would get an education filled with the things that suited them best at the time, laid on a foundation of learning how to learn, good brain-nutrition, and plenty of sleep and exercise. An education that meets them where they’re at, but also extends their abilities, and gives them periods of deep focus and a wide range of things that quicken the mind. Is this easy? No. Should we strive for it? Always.

King of King Nimmo

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