>> Tony Hey: Thank you all for coming today. We've got an interesting speaker from
Microsoft Research Cambridge, Simon Peyton-Jones, who I'm sure many of you know.
There's an ICT crisis in the UK, in the US, and in many of the western world. And
there's now a great deal of interest in both the UK and the US in trying to do something
about it.
In the US there's now an initiative called code.org which Microsoft and other companies
like Facebook, Google, Intel and so on are backing. So I don't think that's quite as far
advanced as a situation in the UK, where it's now officially the government policy that
computer science be treated just like maths, biologies, chemistry and physics, I believe.
But Simon's going to tell about you that and about this computing at schools working
group, where he's been working hard for at least a year or so.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: At least a year.
>> Tony Hey: Quite a long time. Anyway, Simon, great to have you here.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Thank you very much for the opportunity to come here. And
thank you for doing me the honor of showing up. Education isn't a subject about which
anybody has a monopoly on truth. So why don't you all kind of ask questions and make
comments and observations from your own experience as we go along. And that would
reassure me that you're kind of actually alive and in the room rather than feeling that
post lunch stupor that tends to happen at 1:30.
So I work at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, so really I'm a research computer
scientist that was a university professor at Glasgow University. So I've kind of fallen into
education kind of by accident through my children.
So my children started to study at school this subject which in Britain is called
information and communication technology or ICT. And I found that I could not make
any connection between the subject that they were studying at school and the discipline
which I thought was so amazingly fascinating that I diverted my entire professional life
to it, and it was kind of like oh, why as a physicist you would hope might say oh, they're
doing scientist school, I recognize there's a connection with the subject that I study,
right?
So it was that disconnect that led me to get involved in this. So but one thing that you
do need to know about the British system is there is a subject called ICT, right? It is a
statutory subject. Every child must learn it. So whereas that's not true here I believe.
So there's a, as you were, slot that we could exploit.
But it's -- but unfortunately in Britain at least, it's -- it's been a subject that's not -- that
has fallen into disrepute, shall I say, so that this isn't where the -- we're not the only
people saying this. Everybody has -- is upset about ICT in one stage or another. So in
particular they seem to be kind of a bit dull and not really very challenging.
And I think that's partly because in the olden days people didn't have PCs, so schools
thought we should teach kids about how to use Microsoft Office and now they all know
anyway, and the schools are sort of struggling to move on.
So really the most exciting discipline in the world is coming over. It's very dull and
demotivating, and that has led to consistently falling numbers.
Now, this is the -- this is the entries for A level computer science. That's a subject that
students study in Britain between about age 15 -- so it's 16 through to 18, thereabouts.
And hundreds of thousands would study A level mathematics. So A level computer
science is already not very high, and it's falling. And this sad red curve at the bottom is
a welcome to all the women in the room. We need more of you, please. So we have to
do something about all of this.
So this is going in exactly the wrong direction for any developed nation. All right? So
[inaudible] is aware there was a bit of a problem. And these -- this is on a broader time
scale for university admissions. This is from the computer science teacher's association
here in the states. So I think this is US data.
But, again, you can see sort of the dot-com boom and the dot-com bust here. And we
sort of flat end off here. So all of this has got people's attention, right? They've been
aware of these sharply falling levels of interest and excitement about matters
computational, at the very moment of which we're all thinking oh, my goodness, you
know, if we're going to be a developed nation in the world, we need a lot more people
who can do this stuff.
And, by the way, it's the most exciting thing in the world. So there you are. What are
we going to do?
Well, so that was the position we were in in Britain in about 2007, '8. So we thought
well, the first thing we have to do is to try to figure out exactly what is the problem and
what to do about it. So here's I just want to replay for you our thought processes in the
way that we now articulate them in the hope that it may be kind of some interest to you.
You may have observations you want to make about it. Or you may find it useful for
yourself.
So here's how the story goes, that at school we try to teach something about disciplines
to our children. And by discipline, I mean, something that has a body of knowledge and
techniques that dates with slowly like Newton's laws of motion haven't changed very
much in the last few hundred years. And how to solve simultaneous equations hasn't
either.
>>: [inaudible] by special relativity.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Oh, completely superseded by special -- of course, no kid
should learn about Newton's laws of motion anymore. But we do, we think there's
somehow close approximation. At least it dates fairly -- and so these are subjects that
we would think of as cool school subjects, physics, maths, and disciplines like, you
know, modern languages and English as well.
But then there's another class of things we teach at school to do with artifacts. There is
stuff that's 20 do with things that we build, right, software and hardware of various kinds.
So textiles, you're dealing with physical stuff. You're learning how to make clothes.
Food technology. You're dealing with sort of real stuff. And software, of course, has
become very large in this space. And it teaches you stuff that's important and useful
and that I want our children to learn something about in schools, but which in our
discipline have become in Britain completely dominant.
This is the way the subject of ICT has ended up. It's very focused around technology.
And indeed I don't think that until very recently, in the British school system, at any rate,
there was any recognition that there was a discipline that you would think of that I could
think of maths or physics. Does that make sense?
So the idea of computer science as a discipline even at university level hasn't taken
hold until, I suppose, late '70s. I was at university in the late '70s and at that stage there
was not a computer science degree at Cambridge. Of course, Cambridge is a bit slow
about these things. Other universities are a bit more nimble.
>>: [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Uh-huh. Now they have reluctantly brought one in, yes, as a
kind of newfangled invention. But, yes -- one way of reflecting this is at age 16 in
Britain, there are national exams. They're called GCSEs, general certificate of
secondary education. And there's a bunch of other related things called BTECs and
diplomas.
But, anyway, at age 16 children in Britain take a raft of national examinations. In 2009,
at any rate, there were a dozen different qualifications you could take at that level in ICT
and none, literally zero, in computer science, which completely insane when you look at
it like that, isn't it? Just bonkers. But nevertheless that's the way it was. All right?
So what are we to do? Well, we have to shift the whole mental picture that people have
computer science from the left to the right. So this is, I think, the way most people, if
you walked them up -- up to them in the street and said what is someone who worked at
Microsoft like, right, they -- they're one of -- they're kind of us really. Sorry about this.
We have a kind of rather narrow image in the world. And I think that most people would
think of computer science as being something that people like us might take at
university. Does that make sense? And in a vocational kind of way, you know, so that
we could work at Microsoft. Right?
And it's a very big shift to say no, no, no, it's a foundational discipline in the same way
that you might think of maths or physics as foundational, that every child should learn at
an elementary level for the same kinds of reasons as they learn elementary maths or
physics.
That is quite a big shift. And that, I think, is what we're about. That's the larger picture
of what we're trying to do.
So this was a part of our trying to articulate the mission. Incidentally nobody has said
anything at all yet. This is partly because I have a very high output bandwidth. But
please don't treat this as being a sort of -- you know, I'm positively would like you -- yes,
thank you.
>>: One [inaudible] here I guess I'll say is historically data processing has been, you
know, the sort of the business side of the field. So you're dealing with punch cards and
computer ->> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yeah.
>>: And companies doing inventory and things like that, right? So -- you know, and
that's where COBOL comes from. You know, at some level -- I remember, and I don't
know how this has evolved over time, but I remember there were like IT wasn't part of
the business school, right?
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Uh-huh.
>>: So is that one -- is that one of the reasons that [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Oh, yes. Yes. So, I mean, this is a good segue into this slide.
Because there's a lot of sort of confusion in the area. So that if you talk to somebody -certainly somebody outside of the field -- often people who are in, and you say
something ICT or computing, then you mean one thing and they hear something
completely different, right?
So you might say computer science, and they hear you say information and
communication technology or they might hear you say something about the school's
management information system. Or they might hear you saying something about how
you can use technology to teach geography better, which is important, make no
mistake, but is not computer science, right?
So ICT and school have become synonymous with all of these things sort of smooshed
up together into a vast ball of mud that was sort of fuzzy.
Yes. Go.
>>: Do you see ICT computer science still being taught simultaneously as in the ICT
components just in this stream lining into every subject, rather than just being a subject
->> Simon Peyton-Jones: Right. Right. So the question is do we see ICT and computer
science being taught simultaneously. Actually, so, yes. They initially evolved in the
same way to see physics, chemistry and biology being taught simultaneously initially. In
primary school you learn science, right? And you don't really think this is a physics
lesson, this is a chemistry lesson. It's all -- indeed you might not even think this is a
science lesson versus this is a maths lesson or this is history. You might be doing the
Egyptians, right, and you do some history and some science kind of at the same time.
In the primary school -- primary teacher's mind there's something a bit separate going
on. But it's not siloed at primary school. So, I think, initially, yes, together. By the time
you get to age 16, you might have want to exercise some choice about whether you
wanted to specialize more in, you know, the computer science aspect or the applied ICT
aspect or just in French indeed.
Does that make sense? Yeah.
>>: Have you worked at all with Lenore Blum [phonetic] down CMU? She's been very
effective at broadening the definition of computer science to things that are important
appealing to non-male geeks but also make the discipline far more interactive and
interesting and more effective.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Lenore?
>>: Lenore, L-e-n-o-r-e, Blum.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: No, Lenore, I have not. No. I've talked to Jeanette Nguyen
quite a bit. But not Lenore. So that's something for me to take away and do. Thank
you.
Yes?
>>: So I don't disagree with you, but, you know, I -- you could [inaudible] training.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yes.
>>: And I could just as easily be saying well, they should all learn electrical engineering
because the fundamental thing that drives our economy. Why computer science
[inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Oh.
>>: It's secondary. So [inaudible] a reason why computer science should be elevated
to this level that every child needs to know it.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: So -- so -- so you were asking -- you could say electrical
engineering drives our economy. So I think of the driving our economy bit as very much
a sort of stage two in in an argument. It appeals politicians because they are worried
about our economy.
But I tend to start, first of all, what do we want every child to know? So I'm going to -actually, can I come back to this question ->>: Okay.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: About the every child bit. Because I think it's a good one. Is it
should we start to teach computer science at primary school or secondary school or
maybe just at university? I think it is the point at which reasonable people might differ.
But I want to get a specific [inaudible] about that in a second. Yeah.
So what are we going to do? So first thing we have to articulate a story about before we
can even ask the question should every child learn it, we need to ask the question about
well, what is it in the first place? Right? So here sort of standard words that you all
know from your sort of CS education.
But I think it's also helpful to separate out into what children should know from what
children should be able to do, right. And this includes programming and computational
thinking but also abstraction and modeling and design, all of those kinds of skills as
well.
But I found as well as putting sort of statements like this up that might make sense to -to -- let me just skip on a second to -- those sort of words might make sense to people
who already have some sense of computer science.
I found it quite helpful to give a kind of visceral sense of what computer science at a
primary school might look like. And so here's a video that comes from the computer
science unplugged outfit. This is Tim Bell in New Zealand who has been -- is it still
going? No. I want to go. But I don't want loud speaker noises to come out.
Tim Bell developed this -- it's kind of like a mini computer science curriculum based on
teaching computer science without using computers at all. Right? So I like that
because it separates the discipline from the technology. Because I think what we have
to do is to uncouple ourselves from technology.
So here this little video, which is only 60 seconds long is talking about sorting. And so
he's just doing a little bit of motivational stuff with bits about sorting on the -- you know,
how you often see things sorted. And I'll let him tell the rest of the story about
[inaudible] ->>: Today we're going to look at a clever way of doing the sorting quickly. We're going
to sort these six numbers into order using the pattern on the floor.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Can you hear?
>>: The trick is to follow the lines on the floor until you meet someone at a box. You
complete your number with the other person and the smaller number goes to the left
while the larger one goes to the right. Everyone does this at the same time. So I have
three comparisons being made at once. You continue through the sorting network until
you get to the boxes at the end. If you've done everything correctly, you'll come out in
increasing order from left to right. The sorting network is a great team activity and you
can time teams against each other.
You can design large assorting networks to sort more than six numbers, but you need to
be very organized. You can find lots move details -- [laughter].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: He takes -- took all morning to do that -- that last five
seconds.
So what I like about this video is that -- you laughed a bit when you saw the kids moving
around. And the great thing is there's actually a state for education that also laughs a
bit. It want an in joke, but it's tacky, right? You can kind of see that it's engaging in
some kind of way.
Also, you can see that it has nothing to do with computers per se because it was just
kids on the playground. And also you can see that it has -- there's clearly something
intellectually interesting going on. Even an averagely inquisitive eight-year-old couldn't
not say I wonder if that would work if you had -- you started with the numbers in a
different order. Maybe you just set it up by the way you set up the beginning.
No, no, it will work for any order in the beginning. What would happen if we wanted to
sort more numbers? How could we do that? Could we do it with few of those boxes
and wires? Right? Now, those are questions, some of which are quite deep. You
might need to, you know, have a university education to answer them for sure.
But I love the way that an eight-year-old could ask them and it could be clearly about
something to do with computational thinking, not just how do I get the semi-colons in
this Java program right to make it run. Does that make sense?
And also it's something that clearly quite young children can engage with at some level.
So I want to just to kind of make the case that, you know, that we can argue for
computer science as a -- I want to say a bit more, to answer your question. But just as
a foundational thing that isn't just about boosting our economy or getting a good job,
right? It's that, too. That makes it sort of super persuasive. And not only is it amazing
fun and it's education and foundation but also you get a great job, right?
And it sort of infuses all the other subjects. And this is the thing I keep saying, rooted in
ideas, not in technology. And you have to keep saying this because everybody out
there has this very clear picture that computer science is fundamentally about
computers, right? It will take quite a bit of uncoupling to get them past that.
Okay. Now, to return to your point then, why do we teach science to every child? Not
every child is going to become a physicist, right? And yet we try to teach every child
some elementary physics. Now, why is that?
When I reflect on this, and you may have different answers, I think, well, somehow in
my heart, I think that even the ones who are going to become hair dressers and lawyers
are going to be living in a physical world that's kind of governed by physical laws. And if
you don't know something about the laws that govern the world you operate in, you're
very kind of disempowered. How are you going to have a -- any kind of opinion about
global warming or what's happening to our environment if you know no science
whatsoever and if you think it's something to be done by other people in white coats.
So what I'd like is for everybody to have some -- some sense of empowerment and
control over the digital world that they live in so that they don't just leave it to the people
in this room to figure out how their world's going to work.
Now, I don't -- maybe you could make the same argument about electrical engineering,
but I think computation has become so ubiquitous, so much part of everybody's life that
I think there is a story to be had here.
>>: I think schools electric engineering is just knowing about electrons and stuff. It's
science. Physics.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Part of science. Yeah.
>>: And then you go and do the electrical engineering>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Which is more applied. Yes. Yeah, Ben?
>>: But to the point of, you know, you need to know this so the world doesn't control
you or whatever, I think statistics is a very powerful sort of former reasoning. Again,
isn't really requiring [inaudible] in the United States. And I think it's more so the fact that
people are ignorant of it and people use their ignorance against them all the time.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Right.
>>: So, you know, you could elevate this argument to a lot of things that -- maybe not a
lot, but at least that one.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Right.
>>: But I would argue even more important [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: But for statistics, to take that example, at least they are
learning -- I mean, what would you -- would you -- you might be happy with the way
they're starting to learn mathematics in primary school and then want to make sure that
by the time they got to secondary school they were getting some decent topics.
Maybe you might want at primary school make sure they're doing some coin flipping.
>>: In the United States I don't think -- I mean, many high school students never ->> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yeah, yeah, right. So got to fix that.
>>: [inaudible].
>>: Fine arts, music.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: No, no, no. So -- [laughter].
>>: [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: So this is ->>: [inaudible] that's a good question. I mean, it's a question everybody [inaudible],
you know, number of choices you need to prioritize. So what's the thinking there?
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: So at least in the UK this is an easier question to answer
because we already have this ICT slot.
>>: Oh, I see.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: As it were. So we can just redeploy it. It's much harder here.
Because at primary school you don't have any kind of ICT slot. So you're stuck in this
zero sum game. And I think there, I really don't know. It becomes a sort of almost a
political tactical question about how to get -- because in some ways it's not a zero sum
game. I think that, you know, computation can sort of enrich and infuse lots of other
subjects. You even get more -- you know, if you push a little bit of X out, you might get
more of X back in. Do you see what I mean?
In other words, the cake could be made a bit bigger. It's not just that a child's brain is
like a one-pint-size pot and if you pour something in you got [inaudible] Kevin. You had
something. Did you want to say something to that?
>>: [inaudible] statistics -- here's some statistics for [inaudible]. For the AP test,
140,000 AP tests last year. Computer science, 24,000. So if we could get computer
science anywhere near statistics that ->>: The HD computer science is just programming Java in the US?
>>: Yes. And it's not even terribly complex programming in Java.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: But the AP is way, way up at the top. This is after a long time.
I'm starting about trying to start much earlier. Yeah?
>>: Just sticking on that previous question as well. A lot of the data you showed shows
the pipeline degrading at the other end. But as you mention, if we're going to have to
convince people to actually invest into this, where's kind of the -- you know, being more
data oriented to convince people this is necessary.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: You mean, how will you convince people that this is an
important thing to do?
>>: Yes.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Well, I don't know how to -- I mean, that, in the end is a
political question, in the best sense of the word, meaning a sense in which, you know, a
notation thinks to itself how should we be, right? And so all I can tell you is what worked
for us. And I'm going to do that in a second after the talk. Yeah?
>>: Yeah. So the -- so the current ICT -- I mean, I don't know anything about it.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yeah.
>>: But you know it's not like when I went through high school in the late '70s typing
classes were a common requirement.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yeah.
>>: It seems analogous to that.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Right. Yeah. Yes. And in effect we've moved on past it. I
mean, there are some good bits to it. Good ICT teachers are doing good and innovative
things.
>>: But I sometimes look at it and say I somehow managed to avoid the typing class
but I suffered my entire career by not being able to touch ->> Simon Peyton-Jones: Right.
>>: So maybe there is some value ->> Simon Peyton-Jones: Oh, yes. So I don't want to abolish ICT completely. So
there's some value there. So there's a kind of -- people sometimes say well children are
digital natives now. We don't need to teach them anything about how to use computers
because they already know.
But I think they already know it at quite a superficial level. And I think good teachers
have quite a lot to show them about how to use computers and, you know, use and
apply computers in an interesting and purposeful way. That's not really my expertise.
But I know there's a whole educational strand about that. And I don't want to rubbish it
at all.
I just want to reduce the amount of air time it gets. So that's a bit to answer your
question about what to push out, because I squeezed that down a bit.
Now, it's going to do the same thing to me.
So I don't know why I thought -- and always previously my lovely computer has known
that it's projecting things and not done this business. Or too many questions. That's a
good thing. Right.
So let me just spend a little bit of while telling you a bit about what's happened in Britain
in response to these kind of thoughts. So having figured out some story which has
many possibilities of being, you know, not quite the right story and [inaudible] from
country to country a bit, then we need to somehow engage the selection of people, the
stakeholders who are involved in this and to do something about it.
So we formed this thing called the computing at school working group, back in 2008.
There was four of us to start with. And it was meant to be individuals who care about
fixing ICT. At that stage it was just in Britain.
So when I say individuals, this included school teachers and people from industry and
university academics and members of professional societies and parents and school
governance, that's equivalent to people on the school board. And it was just the
volunteer organization. We didn't have any money, didn't have any [inaudible] offers it
was just we were going to try to do something.
And so we started a little outward facing website. This is still alive. You can take a look
at this if you want. There's the URL. But this thing started with four people. It's been
growing quite rapidly. So in the last month another 600 people joined. I still remember
when we got to a hundred after a year because I used to maintain a spreadsheet with
all the people in it. And now 600 people are joining a month. It's just astonishing.
So we went to 5,000 members recently. And once this starts to happen, then people
start to pay attention. Because you can say speaking to quite a lot of people. Now,
these people are not all teachers. There are quite a lot of the teachers a sort of big
significant majority I would say are teachers. But there's a really constituency of
software professionals. This speaks of the kind of things that Kevin here is doing and
indeed the people in this room. And quite a lot of people from further and higher
education. This is all good. So lots of teachers but not all. And that's important, I think,
that it's not just the teachers talking shop.
But I wanted to say a little bit about teachers because they, in some ways, are the -potentially the blocker. I was very worried that we'd find that the school -- the ICT
teachers of the nation were saying we're ICT teachers, we think our subject is great.
We're happy. Go away. And that would have been a serious problem because there
are a lot of them. And they're sort of sitting on the -- you know, they're sitting in the
classrooms with the students.
But, in fact, it turns out that a lot of teachers, ICT teachers in in Britain, at any rate, have
been quite upset about what they're being asked to do. Because they're very powerfully
motivated to do the right thing for their students. They're very committed to their
students. But they're largely not happy with the status quo.
These are some quotes from some teachers. This one about sales environment is to do
with lead tables. In Britain schools are assessed by their examination results. And
they're published in tables of order. You know, you can see what proportion of the kids
in any school got grade A through C in science or in maths or in computer science.
And so schools are strongly motivated to get good exam results. Because if they go
down in these lead tables then nobody -- it's the prime reliever on head teacher's
behavior is this now. And in ICT, aha, ICT you could get an ICT GCSE, you remember
that age 14 qualification, by submitting only course work, there was no exam.
Why? Well, it's a practical subject, isn't it? That's very sensible. But course work, you
submit the course work to your teacher. They mark it, they say you got a D. Why don't
you resubmit it? And you can resubmit it. And so the teacher has to mark it again.
Can you imagine how soul destroying it is to get given a piece of course work this thick
because there's lot of screen shots. It's very, very paper intensive. And to have to mark
it and to have to mark it again. And to be -- for your head teacher to sweep all these
students into your subject on -- who don't really want to do it on the grounds that they
can all get As because they -- you get the idea. It's not -- really, it's very, very
demoralizing to be a teacher in this kind of environment. So what we want to do is to
kind of, you know, encourage them to believe that their subject is actually important and
exciting and that we'd like to sort of help support them into moving into kind of new area.
So they're very keen. This is not -- I'm talking about a large minority. I don't think I can
really speak for -- the majority of British school teachers. But I have been enormously
impressed by the sort of depth of fundamental motivation that school teachers have for
their children.
So we should -- you know, the high order bit should be believe in the teachers and
support them rather than slapping them about. Mr. Gove, which is our secretary of state
for education, has been somewhat guilty of slapping them about.
So what do we do? So CAS, this computer school working group started lots of hubs.
These are local organizations. You know, just a bunch of about 10 or 15 teachers who
get together. We got 65 hubs around the country now. We started a conference. I was
very skeptical about this. What were -- yes. Go.
>>: What kind of -- so these ICT teachers -- ICT teachers, what are their -- kind of what
are their normal background?
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Oh, what is the background of an ICT teacher? Oh, typically
business studies or geography. They're definitely not computer scientists. There are
some. But mostly they're from other disciplines. So mostly they feel themselves to be
pretty underqualified to support this shift, all right?
At the same time I try to -- I talk to them, I say, look, you know, it's only computer
science, it's not rocket science. Right? And we're trying to teach it to an 11-year-old.
You can almost certainly learn enough to be one step of an 11-year-old probably.
So, but that -- you get the sort of zen is don't -- don't say you must be well qualified.
Because they're not, right? You've got to say we believe in you. You can do it. Yes.
That's the plan. So conference. We started a conference for 250 teachers come and
it's very -- it's quite humbling, actually, to see 250 teachers come and how excited they
are to find each other really. Because mostly they're isolated. You know, they're in the
wilds of Wallingford and they don't know any other ICT teachers. They are amazed to
find there are other teachers and indeed university academics.
And you know, Professor Sir Tony Hoare who wants to come and meet them. They're
kind of excited about that. It's great. They're very enthusiastic. And nor is it just -- I've
been speaking so far about the computing at school working group, but it's not just CAS,
it's a whole bunch of little organizations in Britain that are growing up more or less
independently at the same time.
Have you heard of the Raspberry Pi? You've heard -- have some of you heard of it?
This is a credit card size computer made by a guy called Eben Upton and his
colleagues actually in Cambridge again who said we ought to make an affordable
computer. It cost $30. And it's a little self contained computer. You need to connect to
screen and a keyboard. But then you have yourself a little Linux machine.
And so this -- this -- they -- they thought they'd sell 10,000. And when they first went on
sale they went on sale from the Farnell and Radio Spares website. These are guys who
supply resistors and integrated circuits to supplies. You can actually just -- if you want
to buy a resistor, that's where you go. They put them on these two websites. The
demand for them took those websites down: They're just extraordinary. They sold over
a million. They thought they'd sell 10,000. So this is a little fuzz.
Then all these other little organizations in -- these are all ones in Britain that have been
fizzing away independently of CAS. So it kind of has a sense of there's kind of
gunpowder all over the floor. All you've got to do is light it. And that's just Britain, right?
There's lots of other stuff around in other parts of the world like right here. You know,
there's TEALS right here in Washington where you can go and teach computer science.
And there's code.org, which I was speaking to Jane earlier, which is, you know, a US
based organization specifically aimed at encouraging programming for children at
school.
And it's kind of like there's a fizzing mass of stuff going on in different -- it's not just the
understand, this is New Zealand. All over the world, this stuff is sort of fizzing up at the
moment. If we can only kind of harness all this sense of momentum we may be able to
actually get movement. And that is what's happened in Britain because here is the
remaining problem, right?
We've got all this fizzing energy and stuff and teachers being excited. And what we got
-- well, so this is the department for education, you see [laughter] it's actually -- it don't
look quite like this. It's a building in London. But it's a -- the educational establishment,
at least in our perception back in 2008, is kind of like an enormous edifice with an
incredible amount of inertia and that we have to sort of scale its walls.
Well, the first thing we learned was that the walls were undefended. There were no
people on the battlements pouring boiling lead on us. That is, the ICT establishment
didn't really -- there weren't a lot of people saying ICT is exactly the way it should be.
Not among the teachers, as I've already mentioned, knowing the establishment. In fact
there was a realization that Houston, we had a problem. We didn't quite know what the
problem was. So that was good. Undefended walls. Make sense?
The other big advantage that we have in Britain is we've only got one of these castles.
Here you have 50 of them called states and each of them has thousands of sub-castles
called school districts, right, each of which needs to be individually assaulted. But we
only had one.
So now, then, whatever, when you want to sort a castle, a good thing is to get shock
troops from a different country. And so -- I regret to say that it was the chief executive
of Google not the chief executive of Microsoft who did this. He -- we had been making
the case about this at -- what's the word the-- educational establishment. But it was so
not on the political radar. It's astonishing how a few sentences in a speech by a highly
-- by a senior powerful individual can suddenly change the whole picture so that it's on
the political radar, not just the educational radar. Do you see the difference?
So actually it was only about four sentence this is this speech in August 2011 when he
said how astonished he was. It was a bit of a -- it's not as if in America every school
teacher's programming, is it? But nevertheless he was flabbergasted that in Britain we
were abandoning the heritage of Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing and not teaching
programming in our schools.
Three weeks later -- huh?
>>: [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: What -- which ->>: [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: US. That's right. All you've got to do is to get them to change
one -- that's right. Or maybe we should send somebody from you had British Airways or
) say the same thing over here. Maybe people from abroad can say things that people
locally -- I don't know what it is. Anyway. This -- within three weeks David Cameron
was saying in newspaper you interviews I think Eric Schmidt is right, we should teach
programming to our kids in school.
So it changed the -- it changed the political atmosphere to one in which it was a subject
of political debate in which newspapers were starting to write about it, rather than just
an educational question. So it was really very helpful.
>>: Just to [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yeah.
>>: Again said you can use computer science programming to teach programming.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yes, yes, that's right. So in public desirous computer science
and programming are highly confused, highly confused. So ->>: [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Did I? Oh, I'm very sorry. Right. We have to ->>: In code.org does to some extent ->> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yes, because it's -- we want to teach our kids to code. So
there's a newspaper articles are why we must teach our kids to code. So I regard this
as being, as it were, this is our foot in the door, right? Everybody seems to get the hang
about programming, right?
So once we've got a foot in the door, then we can wedge it out and say actually it's not
just programming, it's computer science. So, yeah?
>>: This is kind of related but do you have any thoughts of maybe calling some of this
stuff that we call computer science, call it math, to be very clear about you're not sitting
at keyboard? That has some connotation like ->> Simon Peyton-Jones: So should we call it math? So indeed people have often said
maybe we should just teach computer science as part of mathematics and sort of
smuggle it into the maths curriculum.
So one reason that I want to -- that I think that would be a mistake is that I think that it
would be regarded as a very much a second class citizen in the mats curriculum by the
mathematicians, almost as a tactical point, right?
So, in fact, in the British A level curriculum, there is a module called decision maths.
But it is regarded as the thing you do if you can't hack calculus. I don't want computer
science to be regarded like that. I think -- you know, we are now a discipline in our own
right. So -- and maybe -- maybe it might be delivered that way, but I want -- they're sort
of head lined to be clear about what we're trying to do.
Yeah, the back.
>>: [inaudible] you get my college math department kind of [inaudible] trouble
separating out the math that people do for math and the math that people do for
physics. You would be receiving [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Right. Right. And a mathematician wouldn't like it if you said
we're not going to teach math as a discrete subject anymore, we're going to teach it as
part of physics because after all it's very useful in physics, right? It's not going to
happen. A physicist is not going to teach about simultaneous equations really. Even if
they need them, they'll teach them some sort of quick recipe to get the job done so they
can figure out when the ball hits the ground, right? They're not going to teach the
mathematics and no more is mathematicians really going to teach about computer
science.
>>: [inaudible] maths [inaudible] physicist are much the same, and they do teach how
to do simultaneous equations. Speaking as an X ->> Simon Peyton-Jones: The applied mathematicians.
>>: They're the same as theoretical physicists.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Uh-huh.
>>: A few hundred physicists control it you would never have [inaudible]. [laughter].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: The other things is the mathematicians and the physicists
have been around for hundreds of years. And they are really powerful and well
organized. So we kind of -- so one possibility, you know, if you can hitch yourself to
their power, that's good. But at the same time, they'll completely squash you if you -anyway.
So another thing that was very helpful to us, apart from Eric making this, then six
months later the Royal Society produced this report. Why did this report -- this is a sort
of -- I've haven't bought a physical copy. It's a very influential report because CAS had
been around for four years. Royal Society has been around 400 years. Guess who the
government listened to? They listened to this.
So there's lots of evidence, lots of graphs. Why did this report happen? Actually in part
it happened because some fellows of the Royal Society knew about CAS and thought
what could we do to help? One thing we could do to help would be to get the Royal
Society to produce a heavyweight report.
So even though we didn't write this, for CAS's existence and activity was crucial to
making it happen in the first place. It's very important.
Now, this report was just about to hit the streets, and, of course, Mr. Gove, who is our
secretary of state for education, got prior look at it. And we had been talking to the
Department of Education. So they knew it was coming down the road. And then he
gave this speech. This was in January 2012. It's only a year and a half ago he gave
this speech.
Every year, the same time of year in January at a particular educational technology
show called the bet show, the secretary of state for education, which is the boss man for
education in Britain gives a speech. And in the speech he said this. So you can see
from this he's recognized, at least his speech writer has recognized that computer
science is a discipline that's not -- that's the disconnect of technology. This is real help.
Because it gave sort of air cover to everything that followed.
Then within the GCSEs -- do you remember I said about those GCSEs age 16
qualifications and nobody -- every child takes them at age 16? If there is no
qualification in Japanese basket weaving, you cannot study Japanese basket weaving
between age 14 and 16.
Since there were no computer science qualifications, you could not study computer
science in that age bracket. It was just impossible. So it's kind of like an impenetrable
roadblock.
Who produces GCSEs? Not the government in Britain. It's a bunch of awarding bodies
which are -- there's about four or five of them. And here are some of their names, AQA,
Edexcel, WJEC. They are nonprofit making bodies. But they're not government
creatures. They make their money from students paying them to take their exams. So
they are sort of businesses with multi-million pounds turnovers. They do see
themselves as being in the world to do good. They're not primarily profit making. But
nevertheless nobody can tell them what to do, their businesses.
So we've been knocking on their door saying you should have a computer science
GCSE and they'd be saying hmm, well, hmm. Would anybody take it? After all,
nobody's taking them now. You think -- because there aren't any, right? So it's either
chicken and egg situation. Well, bless them.
OCR, one of them, launched a pilot in September 2010, which is immediately
oversubscribed. So that was very helpful. It was evidence of some demand. And
following the secretary of state's speech in the following February, after this speech, the
discussions that have been taking place within awarding bodies came to push and they
said we're going to offer GCSEs as well.
So suddenly what had been an impenetrable roadblock became something about which
there was a diversity of choice. And that was really helpful. That was a big help.
Then there's a -- this is some colleagues of mine at Microsoft made this .NET gadget
here, things -- it's a snap together thing that you build little bits of hardware out of little
modules that are very cheap. And Raspberry Pi, of course. So these were very eye
catching things.
So, again, they're not the whole solution back to we don't want to be stuck with just
technology or programming. But nevertheless they really got people's attention. So it
was very helpful this stuff in getting it on to everybody's radar.
We got quite a lot of newspaper coverage. Again, same point. You know, why we must
teach -- it didn't say why we must teach our kids computer science. But nevertheless
it's a big help. And this was a six-page supplement. You know, this is a broad sheet
newspaper. We have those. They're kind of this size. And well endearingly published
on the 1st of April. But they assure me that it [laughter].
So there was -- so quite a lot was going on. And then as it turned out, and this is
entirely serendipitous, the -- Michael Gove was elected -- the conservative government
was elected in 2010 or thereabouts and Michael Gove, the secretary of state for
education said he wanted to do a review of the whole national curriculum. Not just this
piece, the whole of it.
So there's been an ongoing mighty steam roller crunching down the road of revising the
British national curriculum.
And as part of the steam roller in the middle of last year, the department for education
thought, right, we need to write new programs of study, that is curricula, for all of our
subjects. And we've been making so much noise about computing that they said -- all
the other ones they wrote themselves. But for this one they said why don't you write the
first draft. That would get us off the hook. So they kind of realized that they didn't really
know what to do. And they outsourced it to the British Computer Society and the Royal
Academy of Engineering. And they set up a committee which I ended up chairing. So
we wrote the first draft of the new national curriculum.
So in a blink we'd shifted from being a kind of pressure group at the bottom of a deep,
deep mind shaft sorting -- oh, dear, that's a mixed metaphor, sorting the walls of this
castle, right, to being the group that the -- it's like [inaudible] saying captain, turn left,
turn left. And then the captain says, well, why don't you take the wheel for a bit. And
then you have to think well, is it 15 degrees left or 20 degrees left.
It's quite daunting, actually, when you shift from the turn left, turn left message to the
just exactly where.
So we had this little working group that wrote a new national curriculum. I just thought I
would put up here the aims.
So this is -- when I say a new national curriculum, it's very short. We were told two
sides of A4 to cover age six through 16, right? So this means you can't go into very
much detail. But it's a great discipline actually if you're forced to try to distill what you
think is really important on to two sides of A4. But here are the aims that we wrote. So
these first two -- this is [inaudible] covering from age six to 16, primary school onwards.
Fundamental principles of computer science and analyzing problems and computational
terms and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs to solve
them. So that's sort of programming. Programming from an early stage, but in the
context of a discipline, not in the context just of a skill to get you a job.
And then these two are more familiar, certainly in the British system, ICT kind of skills,
which we still want to be in that.
So for me, this as an overarching picture, and I think these aims are likely to make it into
the final version. The final version is going to be out in two months time, in September,
2013. And it will be statutory, meaning the law of the land in 2014, September 2014.
And when I say the law of the land, I mean, that every state maintained school will have
to teach it, unless it's an academy, which about half of them are. So probably about -and a significant chunk of schools will have to follow the national curriculum and the rest
of treat it as a benchmark from which they will deviate with caution, right? So this will
be, like it or not, very influential.
So I don't want to say that we've got this right. Incidentally, it is still very short. And it's
readily available online. You just type in UK national curriculum, and you'll find some of
this. Make sure we look at the new lead, new proposed one.
We may not have got everything right. And it's a bit scary to think that may be writing
words that will be actually lastly for a decade. But we've kind of done our best. And it
does embed some of -- some of these ideas, at least in very brief form. But because it's
so brief, we can't go too far wrong, right? Because necessarily it leaves lots of scope
for teachers to teach it in a variety of different ways.
So any other quick observations? So that was more like kind of a history of some of the
excitement that's taking place over in Britain at the moment.
But I feel as if it's like that we've kind of won the air war, right? We've love bombed the
department for education into submission. And they have capitulated and surrendered.
But as we all know, the ground war is the slow part and the expensive part. So we've
done the easy bit, right? What's the ground war?
This means school by school. Head teacher by head teacher. Parent by parent.
There's a lot to do. And in particular with the teachers, right? So we got to encourage
new teachers into the profession and train our existing teachers. So for CAS for in our
British context the focus is switched very much to how are we going to train and support
and encourage and affirm and equip, all of that, our existing cohort of ICT teachers so
they can do a great job of teaching computer science? And I don't want to spend very
long on this just to say that we -- you know, this is our main focus now. It's no longer
the curriculum because that sort of very brief thing is more or less agreed.
It's how are we going to turn into reality in the schools across the land? We have three
and a half thousand secondary schools, 25,000-odd primary schools. That's a lot of
teachers to try. So we've launched this network of excellence for teaching computer
science and covering birth, primary and secondary. We actually managed to coax
some money out of the department for education, two million pounds in CAS terms.
That's an enormous sum. But actually it's only 30 pounds per school. So it's not a lot,
right?
It's -- it's -- I think of this as being the oil that will lubricate the wheels of a machine
whose motive power comes from actually people like the people who are sitting in this
room, right? The teachers and IT professionals and the people who care about this has
been in the country.
So there's a kind of -- we're identifying master teachers, teachers who are already good
at teaching computer science, [inaudible] most of this money is going to pay some had
of those teachers to take an afternoon a week to develop and deliver CPD training, of
course, to their colleagues.
We're identifying lead schools. We're trying to involve universities. You might imagine
we're doing lots of sort of community grassrootsy kind of things. And that's the way we
want it to work.
So I wanted to kind of finish more or less here, which is what -- you know, this is all
about us being -- focusing on being what's happened in Britain mainly because perhaps
there's some things from there that will be useful elsewhere. But also because it's a
context thing which quite a lot has happened in quite a short time. So it's kind of
encouraging.
Sometimes, you know, good causes are like pushing this boulder uphill and you push
and you push and however long you push for the boulder is still going uphill. Whereas
here in Britain we sort of manage to get it over the top. And it's a bit scarier. You might
want to make sure it goes down the right piece for now. But here you're still pushing
uphill. So maybe there are some bits of encouragement we could get. Or you could
even scare your politicians by saying you don't want those nasty Britains to get ahead
and take all the jobs, do you?
But somehow the particularities of every country seem different, right? So Britain is -there's a whole set of local factors that mean things that will work in Britain won't work
here and vice versa. But nevertheless I do think that these issues matter a lot to us,
you know, as a -- you know, technical community, and us as individuals. And also I
really hope and believe to us as a company.
So I think there are quite a lot of things, you know, you could do here. So CAS is a -it's a membership organization, but it's free to join. You just have to do the sort of
register thing. And you don't get any spam. So no e-mail. You can just look. Many
and it's not just -- its focus is on Britain. But you're very welcome to join from the United
States. I think increasingly CAS may spawn sort of more international bits. There's
quite a lot of people in Abu Dhabi, for example, for some reason. I'm not quite sure
why. But there they are. So you can just look and watch. And that will give you a
finger on the pulse of a bit what's going by.
So and then, you know, join Ken here and go and teach computer science in a
Washington school. It's amazing, TEALS program, I'm very envious of what TEALS is
doing. Because, you know, we've got nothing as ambitious as professionals actually
going and teaching in schools in Britain at the moment. I'd love to be able to emulate
something of what you've done here.
I meant to put in the TEALS' URL, but I think I failed to do so. And it's faded away as
well. So -- and Jane, who is sitting in the front here, and her colleagues, Elizabeth and
Catherine, Neil and doing lots of did goods stuff in LCA and through youth spot to make
things happen.
But the thing that I really wanted to put at the bottom here as I'm looking harder to Tony
and Jane here, I really want Microsoft to take a visible lead here so that at a kind of
global level I would like to be able to -- people on the street to say to me I like what
Microsoft is doing to support this thing. Whereas I think we are actually on the ground
doing quite a lot in the various educational bits of Microsoft, but we're not doing it very
visibly. And that also helps. I'd like when people -- if, you know, if -- what's your name?
I should know. Jonathan. If you go and teach for Kevin, I'd like to put on your annual
review.
>>: He does.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: And for your manager. He does. Oh, all right. But do you put
it on -- is it on your annual review? And does your manager say, well done, Jonathan?
>>: [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: No. Oh, okay. So, but that would be a good litmus test,
right? If your manager is saying I really like what you're doing, that's sort of pulling your
review up in my estimation. But you can only do that if somehow the company has -anyway, enough said.
There's a sense of -- so I'm basically done here. I just want to create a sentence of that
the -- there's a kind of worldwide movement going on here, a sense of momentum that I
think we can each in our individual countries capitalize on and perhaps we can do more
together than we do individually.
And what we've got to do is not wait for somebody else to do it. Don't wait for Microsoft
to do it. Don't wait for the government to do it. Just get on and do something yourself.
That's the way CAS started.
Because as I say, it was a very small number of people initially. But what we found is
when you start doing something small, the gunpowder is all around, right? All you've
got to do is provide a spark and stuff starts fizzing. So kind of feel empowered
somehow and go and talk to Kevin.
Any other observations and questions? Yeah, Jonathan.
>>: You mentioned something very interesting two slides ago that the ambassadors
from universities ->> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yeah.
>>: Ken Robison said something interesting once which is university professors like to
build, you know, future university professors. How do we also incentivize the professors
to do the ->> Simon Peyton-Jones: Oh, yes.
>>: [inaudible] undergraduates.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yes. Right. This is a particular scheme in the UK in which
undergraduates can get credit, academic credit for going and helping in a school. Why
university academics, I'm not sure how to do this. University academics are, in Britain,
at any rate, under enormous pressure to publish a lot, to teach and so forth, and to give
them another new sort of demand on their time to work in schools are very difficult. I
don't know how to adjust their incentive structures so they will really have incentives to
do so.
Universities are a bit worried about their intake, right? Every department wants to
attract strong students. So to some extent they typically have some kind of outreach
function, which is to do with trying to make the department seem attractive. And if
they're engaged with schools, they're more likely to, I guess. But I don't really have any
good answers to that. But I do think that for the very first time, in Britain at least, until a
couple of years ago universities had no reasonable -- no real reason to be interested in
school education in the subject at all, because it didn't happen in schools.
And now for the first time it does. So for the first time university CS departments have a
stake in what's happening in school. So I'm hopeful that that will lead to some sense of
momentum as well.
Yeah. Was there somebody else? Yeah.
>>: I work on game lab ->> Simon Peyton-Jones: Oh, yes.
>>: And this is really kind of reaffirms why we're seeing such a huge uptake in
downloads from the UK [laughter] a couple months where the UK has been at the top of
the list worldwide even ahead of the US.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Right. Right.
>>: We recently had a contest over the UK and I think just during the contest time we
had 70,000 downloads.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Right.
>>: So it's -- it's better to understand what's driving all that ->> Simon Peyton-Jones: Right. Right. And this I think is ->>: It's driving that to a lady called Claire Ryan who is actually very keen to do these
things. She values the code blue contest, completely amazed by the response. She's
very positive and she's the one I've just given her some money, more than I can afford.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yes. I was thrilled to hear that, Tony, thank you. [laughter].
>>: Because we have to be doing something I believe.
>>: Right.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: But we should put you in touch with Claire because I think she
-- because she's very passionate advocate for Kodu at primary level in the UK. And I
think she'd love to know somebody in the Kodu game lab organization. If I -- if you're
willing to -- hmm?
>>: I'm half the team right now.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Oh, excellent. [laughter].
I hope that's a curve that's going to go up rather than down. That's another part of that
bit at the bottom, right? If we were playing a leadership roll, right, in CS education, then
we might thing we should be, you know, trumpeting Kodu to the skies. Yeah?
>>: Great talk. And I wish maybe I would have loved to hear your -- about what the
curriculum [inaudible] is. And is there a lot of activity right now? I mean, what should -I mean, if you have kids like six to 16, how do you teach them computer science? And
even without -- so is there I guess a lot of activity or so about that? Is there a
consensus or is it also very much up in the air? Or.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: No, I think it's not. I wouldn't say it's terribly controversial, the
sort of what should we teach stuff. I think it's -- so the document that I showed you, the
curriculum for computer science, that sort of longish document, there's the short one
that's -- that the department for education thing. But that's -- that is very short. It's only
two sides of A4. But we wrote this one that I -- did I skip past it too quickly? We, the
computer school working group, wrote this document which is readily available from
computing@school.org.uk. And so is kind of like a 25-page document that articulates in
some detail at least what we thought at the time thought might computer science in
school.
Now, there would be room for differences about that. Reasonable people might differ
about the details. But in some sense, the details are not the important thing. If we can
just, again, get the idea of a discipline you can sort of imagine moving around, you
know, do we want databases in or out? You could argue a bit about that. But the
important thing is computer science.
And to a first approximation, you know, some -- how does Jake Shaw put primary
school? Well, I was -- that little video I showed is what might it look like in the
classroom? It might look something like that. And that's that video that I showed you is
from the computer science unplugged website, which is Tim Bell's thing. And there
were kind of like 30 other activities of that kind, each of which is teaching something that
you would recognize from an undergraduate CS curriculum, but is teaching it at primary
level.
It's quite a remarkable achievement, I think. And so it's not a whole story -- you know, a
whole curriculum taught in a connected way. It's like 30 individual things. But in some
ways teachers are the ones who are good at adding the connective tissue and saying
what's my story line for this. We must trust the teachers to fill in the details.
If we can just give them sort of inspirational ideas in a sense that they are doing
something important and valuable and that we will give them the air cover and the
volunteer cover to do it, then we're good.
Yes?
>>: I'm very interested in this talk. My -- I have a degree in computer science and I am
now a middle school math teacher. Fortunately I have some say over what I do in my
classroom. It's not totally restricted. But I think an earlier point if you're going to put this
into the school what are you going to take out is a really important one. And you seem
to, unless I misunderstood, you seemed to kind of turn it around to, well, if we're not
filling up the kid with this, hopefully the kid will get more -- you were talking more about
in terms of what the student would get out of it, and I was thinking of the question more
in terms of the school day is a fixed length.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yeah, uh-huh.
>>: And we have so much that parents expect us to teach anyway that if you want -- I
think that you want to really make a case to get computer science in school as its own
discipline, you'd have to be prepared to answer what are you going to take out.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yes. Yes.
>>: And the other thing about does everybody need to know how to code, an analogy
that I've heard multiple times over the years is it used to be that we -- a lot of people
learned about how cars run but now we don't need to know that, we just know how to
turn the key and drive them.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Uh-huh.
>>: I think that for many people the benefit of computes is how to make a good
presentation, how to use it at that level, how to use Office. For others then it is the
coding. And I certainly want to encourage students to learn about the other computer
science activities. By the way, I've used computer science unplugged ->> Simon Peyton-Jones: Right, right.
>>: [inaudible] activities from that.
But I'm not sure that I agree that every student needs to be exposed to those ideas in
the context of computer science.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Uh-huh.
>>: [inaudible] the curriculum.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: So what about -- you know, just to go back to your car thing.
So we just turn the key and it works. But we still teach every children -- every child a bit
about combustion in science lessons. Don't we?
>>: Do we?
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: I don't know. Maybe I don't know the details. But we teach
them some science. We teach them some elementary science, right?
>>: Yes.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: So and in the end the science is what, you know, after many
stages, that's what makes the car work, if you like. Right? So it's not exactly how the
pistons go and how this particular internal combustion origin, but we teach them some
of the fundamental principles upon, you know, the ultimately what make cars go. And
we ->>: But aren't cars more electronically run now?
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Well, but I believe they still have things that go bang inside
them. Yes. I mean, they have -- some combustion is still taking place, I think.
>>: [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Anyway, so I suppose, to your points. One, in the end we
have to come clean about what's -- what we have to -- what we're not going to do, right,
but that's likely to be quite local, like to a particular school district or state or manager. I
mean, to have to look at it, and that's going to be a tough row to hoe because anything
that's pushed out will have its defenders, right?
But at the same time, I think we -- you know, if we can make a sort of broad and
subjectively case for why this part at least is important, educationally, economically and
then -- then before we get into the nitty-gritty tactical details about what to leave out,
then I think that -- I think that's a good way to start.
You might then say you might then, as it were, lose the tactical battle. But I think over
time it's like the tide rising. Can you -- it's -- I think it's unmanageable that in the end it
won't -- we won't want every child to know something about the digital world they
inhabit.
>>: Or at least have the option.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: That's right. But in other words -- but somehow how do they
have the option? So they can have the option of specializing in computer science but
they won't even know that they want to do that ->>: Exactly.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Unless they have something elementary. And programming,
even programming, if you were writing rules for your Outlook messages, that's like a
kind of a program really in your little domain specific language. So it's as it were, when
it comes to program, would I like children to not have -- not become experts in one
language that become, you know, expert Java programmers, I'd like them to have had a
superficial acquaintances, I'd like every child to have a superficial acquaintance with
more than one language, certainly two, maybe three, so that they get the feel oh, it's just
another programming language. I could learn this if I wanted to. It's that sense of -- that
sense of empowerment, right, rather than I'm an expert in this particular language which
gets you back to the technology which I want to get away from.
>>: I think it's more of a [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Right. Right. [inaudible] programming teaches you how to
think in a very special way, don't they?
>>: But I think that a lot of that has to think is being done in good math programs.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
>>: The logical reasoning and so forth that then transfers over directly to computer
science.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yeah. Yeah.
>>: See, I'm a little worried about computational thinking. You notice that there was a
bit of a backlash too Jeanette's phrase. The physicists don't like being told how to think
by the can computer scientists [laughter] they think they always know how to think.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yes. So I found it's not very productive only on, what we want
to teach you is, you know, a special way of thinking because everybody thinks they
have a special way of thinking.
>>: A way.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yes, a way. Latin, why should we do Latin? It's a good way
to learn to think, apparently.
>>: But we actually -- just one thing. My sister taught Latin and Greek and because the
national curricula didn't include those, those subjects disappeared from schools.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yeah. Yeah.
>>: So that's one way you actually [inaudible] in the UK.
>>: Well, what you said about parents having expectations about what their kids learn.
So I see how you convince the Department of Education this is necessary. I'm
wondering if you have a perspective on what parents may think versus the US thing?
Like do they expect their kids to be learning this and does that affect how well
[inaudible] going to get into schools?
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: What do parents in the UK think? Well, I think for the most
part, parents -- they are high order [inaudible] what's my child's home work like, are they
behaving well at home and in school? So the sort of details of exactly the sort of
balance between computer science and ICT I suppose would probably not be much on
their radar at all.
And certainly if you said, you know, should we introduce computer science into the
school, they probably wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about because of back
where it started. So at the moment I think actually to be honest we got our hearts and
minds job to do for parents as well to convey this sense of computation as a skill that
every child should know something about. Yeah.
So I would think -- I don't think parents are in the way. But they're not passionate
advocates either. They're kind of being carried along. But the media coverage about all
that sort of programming and coding has been helpful I think. On the whole. Yeah?
>>: Let me help make your argument.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Good.
>>: So I would argue that particularly the demographic society the purpose of education
is to prepare people to be, you know, full members of that society and to vote
intelligently and be knowledgeable about the [inaudible] and I think, you know, in that
respect, I actually think the earlier, you know, point of statistics is something that we
should do a much better job teaching. And I would actually put it above computer
science for that reason.
But computer science I do think, you know, is -- it is a very important force in our time,
all right, and it is something that people's lack of understanding has was incredible
policy repercussions. And I remember, gosh, back in the late '80s, I went to a talk from
Ralph Nader, the famous consumer advocate.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yeah.
>>: And afterwards I was talking with him about some stuff that was going on, let's
move computer science over and stuff at the time and he was making policy
pronouncements that should he lack even the barest understanding of what computers
might do. And he professed, you know, just said oh, that crazy high-tech stuff, I have
no idea about it. And it's like okay, you have a major impact on public policy. You
should know this.
And so I learned from that perspective you could make a very strong case that
computer science at some level, not necessarily a deep level, but at some level needs
to be part of something that any educated citizen should know.
>>: But there's a big difference between knowing what computers can do and knowing
how they do that.
>>: Well, I think you need to have a little bit of an understanding. I think, you know,
knowing what is possible, right, is definitely something that drives your ability to, you
know, reasonably vote on important issues. So, you know, try and think of some recent
examples. But ->> Simon Peyton-Jones: It's just the superficial thing. The computer said it, so it must
be right.
>>: Yeah.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Right. Anybody who has written more than one or two
programs knows that this is completely fallacious. But -- and yet your granny says that
kind of all the time. Somehow the feeling that if -- people have an unreasonable trust in
computers. And so maybe the main thing we could do in computer science is to teach
people that computers might be wrong.
>>: [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Right. [inaudible] and so forth. Yeah.
>>: So I wonder what [inaudible] was a special skill like [inaudible] the fair rows would
afford to have a scribe, the scribe would be the one who had the high paying job, lots of
new words. Okay, then starting with what they [inaudible] years ago there were more
people who new how to write, to make a good living by you go to somebody you want to
send a letter, [inaudible] how to read or write and you going to pay this guy to write a
letter for you. Okay, then we want [inaudible] and then we probably like a hundred
years ago it was the western society, you know, it was no longer a special skill.
Everybody could read and write.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Uh-huh.
>>: [inaudible] computing, computer science. So if you have to the extent that, you
know, all of the keys, 66 things we know how to write a small computer software
program to do something, would it -- would it make our jobs less glamorous? Because,
you know, everybody can do it [laughter].
It was like with, you know, the writing. So just because everybody can read and write,
you know.
>>: Just because you can write doesn't mean you can write ->>: Sure, sure.
>>: [inaudible].
>>: So I just -- I want ->> Simon Peyton-Jones: So you think with a computer scientist you're bound together
and say no, no, we shouldn't teach computer science because we are the gills of people
who know how to do it and we're highly paid and we should keep it that way?
The other query I'd have about the way you put that is the sort of reading and writing at
least a sort of can you read, it's a kind of skill. Can you physically write? Then being
able to write greater is another thing.
But I want to very much position the whole computer science thing as we're learning a
discipline that will stand you in good stead through your whole life, not just learning
some useful skills. But, yeah, that might become commoditized. Yes, we have a
couple of other questions here. Yeah, go ahead.
>>: Um.
>>: Oh. [laughter].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Ethernet, back off. Yes, exponentially, random number
generation. Yes. Lady in the yellow, yes.
>>: [inaudible] so I would like to see more [inaudible] and I think that the way to do it is
to start to introduce the subject really, really earlier, like in elementary school [inaudible]
grade, especially for girls because enough data says that by middle school they have
[inaudible] negative stereotypes about CS.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: You're so right. Yeah.
>>: So I actually -- and so that's one point.
Second is that the technology [inaudible] is very hard, like you said. So what I've tried
to do is try to figure out to offer computer science clubs as after school and enrichment
programs [inaudible] school system.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yeah.
>>: Okay. So and it was really easy to convince the administrators to have -- I talked to
two schools, and both schools were like wow I really want this.
So now we actually -- I actually need lesson plans.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Right.
>>: And I read your 25-page document. And going from that to a lesson plan ->> Simon Peyton-Jones: It's a long way.
>>: For eight weeks I'm here struggling witness. Because you mentioned that the
teachers know how to take that guide and ones it is unplugged and other [inaudible] and
read that story, there aren't those CS -- they're not enough -- I couldn't find a teacher
who knows enough about CS to build that story into a lesson plan.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: You do look at code club. Code club is a UK based
organization developing exactly that kind of material in initially primary school. But I
think it -- and I think they are also planning to extend to secondary school. And
code.org as I understand.
>>: [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Code.org ->>: It's not launched yet, but that's exactly one of their strategies is to build sort of a
toolkit for -- they're turning more than middle school age at first but a curriculum for
those afterschool clubs.
>>: Okay. Because the first question I had was should I go with CS unplugged type
thing which is, you know, decoupled with technology, or should I go with the [inaudible]
hardware/software kind of thing, so should I go with more computational thinking as
Jeanette talks about?
So, you know, there's many of things of how to introduce, yes, to a good audience in
that age group. And is there any consensus on that?
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: I doubt you'll find a saddled consensus. But what I would do,
if I was wanting to introduce C to a girl-type audience I would jump on CAS online, this
group that I told you about. And there's a little subgroup called [inaudible] hashing
glued, which is about -- particularly about girls in computer science and there's about 50
women there who are talking about this all the time. And ask them and say what are
you doing? And they'll tell you?
>>: [inaudible] in the US I would recommend this NC wit.
>>: [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Oh, yes. That's right. Yes.
>>: And they're actually very good. I came away inspired from this year's conference.
>>: Yeah. And girls who code is another particular [inaudible].
>>: In terms of curriculum, scratch has their own curriculum. So there's a lot of
curriculum out there. Scratch is probably --
>>: There's too many out there. Choosing which one is [inaudible].
>>: I would go with scratch.
>>: [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yes.
>>: I would go with scratch and then use sprinkle and CS unplugged [inaudible] every
couple days.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yes. And Kevin has a lot of experience of actually doing this
in a classroom, which I do not. So you should listen -- pay attention to him.
But wouldn't it be great if there were thousands of Microsoftees helping with afterschool
clubs in their school? I mean, you do quite a high-ends thing with TEALS, right? But a
much more modest thing is to run afternoon school clubs. And I think it would be great
if lots and lots of Microsoft employees were doing that.
>>: [inaudible] so I was involved for many years with First, which is the robotics
activities in high schools throughout the world. And one of the things that is very striking
at first is this initial charter was specifically [inaudible]. And they decided, oddly, to do
that through creating this supports model. And we're going to make it like a football
team, right?
And, you know, it just -- it has not succeeded in -- you know, if you take a look at the
competitions, there are very heavily, you know, accommodated by middle class males,
right? And that's kind of what you get by and large.
So I think part of the issue is the target, right? I mean, if we go into these coding
classes that they say, you know, the -- you know, come take this class and you'll be
able to write a video game, well, you know, maybe that is kind of a male centric view of
what coding is good for and, you know ->>: Why are video games male centric, other than the [inaudible] being general.
>>: They are.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Statistically I'm sure they are.
[brief talking over].
>>: [inaudible] why that is but they are.
>>: It depends on the game you play.
[brief talking over].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: I know it's changed.
>>: But the point is that the target -- I think we have to be careful what we choose. We
can talk later. But one of the things that I've been doing is I've been running these
workshops where we build animatronic figures and [inaudible] is to put on a show with
row bought I can characters. We find that that's more appealing. That that's a model
that more girls can relate to.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: That's good. So you have to choose your target. This isn't
something which you're going to legislate from on top. You just got for each little clump
of people who are doing something you need to know who you are [inaudible].
>>: Right. And then [inaudible] you know you have to be careful how you build that out.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Yes.
>>: You know, as you say after doing this, you'll be able to, you know, have this game
where you shoot each other. Well, maybe that's not going to be [inaudible] whereas
maybe if you do Angry Birds maybe it's more [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Did you have an observation?
>>: I was just wondering if offering programming with more [inaudible] discipline
whether we're shooting ourselves in the foot a little bit if we use programming as our
gateway to kind of computer science as a [inaudible].
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: So I think -- well, I think for me programming is to computer
science is lab work is to physics. It's very motivating. It illustrates everything and
makes it more concrete. It gives it animate and gives it life. But it's not -- you would
never try to teach a child physics just by throwing them in a lab with some ball bearings
and a stopwatch and hope that I had reinvent Newton's laws of motion.
So I'm not -- I don't know whether gateway is the right -- the right term. It's kind of like
the -- it's the stuff that brings it alive to me. I think you ought to try to teach computer
science without doing any programming.
>> Tony Hey: I think we should sort of officially close the meeting in just a second. But
then I'm sure we can all beat up Simon afterwards.
>> Simon Peyton-Jones: Can I just say that I'm actually here this whole week. So
today is Monday. And I'm hear until Friday evening, right. And if any of you would like
to talk a bit more about this, then my e-mail address is my alias is SimonPJ. And so I
mean I'd love to -- I'll come to your building you know or we'll go out for dinner.
Anything. But this week is when I'm here then I'll actually be back in Cambridge and it
will be harder to communicate.
So if you'd like to have another chat, then just bing me an e-mail. I'll hang around
afterwards.
>> Tony Hey: I'd just like to introduce one last thing, which is I think there were two
agenda. There's the agenda at LCA, that computer science is an important discipline
and the government, because we don't -- its predicted to be a shortage of IT
professionals to go and work for Microsoft, Google or whoever. That's one view. And
it's a good thing that we get computer science in schools and awareness.
But I would like to at least also put the Microsoft view, all right. So this is actually how I
see it through my lens. I think that's good.
But on the other hand if we don't get Microsoft technologies and content on Microsoft
platforms and services and devices, remember, all right, in the sort of age group some
five upwards, it will be too late because they don't need us any more. They have, you
know, Google, Facebook, Gmail, anything, iPads, iPhones. You know, we need to
actually have great content that you can deliver on great Microsoft platforms.
And so I think there's two agenda. One is the broad agenda, which I think is correct.
But there's the other agenda that I think we need to make sure that at least you could do
it on some really cool Microsoft stuff. But you needn't but you could do. Okay.
So -- and I know how to fix the problem of getting university departments to go into
schools. What you need to do is identify -- I was the head of the department at
computer science. You need to identify in your department Simon PJ. All right. And
then you can do it. You need a champion. And unfortunately you need to clone you.
Anyway, let's thank Simon for all his efforts.
[applause]