When I was teaching computer programming to chemical engineering students I categorically denied that “I’m just not good at programming” was a valid excuse for flunking my subject. Lately I have become less sure of my position. Let’s be clear: I am quite convinced that people have varying levels of aptitiude, it’s just that I had thought that certain skills were so similar that one automatically led to the other. Chemical engineering students in their second year have already passed many mathematics courses and have shown themselves to be intelligent and able to follow the steps required to do algebra and calculus in a relatively mechanical way. Programming has always seemed entirely analogous to math for me, so I made the mistake of generalising from my experience to theirs. As any good lecturer will tell you, this is a fatal mistake.
My brain can’t do that!
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I am constantly fascinated by how inaccessible our brains are to ourselves. The puzzle of exactly how my brain makes the connections between formulae and computer language syntax is probably better understood by some neuroscientist somewhere than by myself. This is, of course, entirely counter-intuitive. Many people would even deny it. But the thing that concreted it for me was listening to this episode of Radiolab (which if you haven’t listened to it yet, is an entirely awesome podcast covering a wonderful array of different subjects in a wonderfully cock-eyed way). Spoiler alert: the skill displayed here is a guy who is able to run multiple symphonies simultaneously in his head. Try it. Start playing a song you know well in your head. A couple of seconds later, try starting another one by a different band. Now tell me where you are in the two different songs. If you are remotely normal you will be unable to even conceive of how to do this. The feeling I get when I try to do this makes me wonder: if we have such a clear example of a person who can do something that seems totally unrelated to skill or practice, but which normal people cannot do, who am I to say that those people in my class just couldn’t “get” programming, ever?
The problem is that it leads to an uncomfortable end point. I cannot assume that any student who struggles simply cannot do the stuff he’s trying with – that would invalidate the entire purpose of teaching! Well, unless you ascribe to the notion that teachers are only allowing their students to reach their potential, but that’s a whole different post. Like the conundrums of free will, it appears the argument ends in a place where assuming something we know to be wrong in general (that “any student can do this”) is both easier and less risky than correctly determining who has the ability in the first place and then only focusing our attention on them.
One good thing has come from these musings though: I find myself being much more sympathetic to the struggles my students have. And I suppose a little empathy never hurt anyone.
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