[Ericson2314]

At least in America, these views are necessary to push against for-profit faux trade school blather. The Krishnamurthi stuff referenced in the leading comment which is quite similar has been actually studied; there is evidence it is a better curriculum.

Perhaps we need trade schools too, but primary education should not be that.

Also, it's not all abstract nonsense without computers. Learning to hand-evaluate functional programs is perfectly reasonable, and no more tedious than long arithmetic by hand. I've seen students treat the implemenation like a black box, when the interpeter algorith is not complicated, which I highly doubt is good for pedagogy. (Though, as I have not studied education, I've leave that at "highly doubt".)

And finally, completely separate from the above, it's good to avoid computers for focus/attention reasons in many classroom settings. Even if they somehow could speed up learning, until we've worked out all the psychological effects of bright fast moving screens and stuff, I can't say I mind the good ol' paper and pencil that every teacher knows well.

[dboreham]

Careful there: long arithmetic probably isn't a great example, since it has no purpose to someone with a calculator -- it would be better to spend the time teaching number theory, no? And, I believe it's important to convey that "this method really only makes sense if you have a computer". Nothing turns students off like mechanical wrote method learning.

[Ericson2314]

Everyone should know how to hand-substitute lambdas and do arithmetic slowly. We should skip all the rote crap to make people faster.