this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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I dropped out on my 16th birthday and I never completed level 1 NCEA. I asked to do a programming class and showed them a program I had written, but all they could offer me was Microsoft Visual Basic. Which, from my understanding, is stuff like putting a button on the screen, clicking it, and making it say "button clicked" (that was year 12's programme for 16-17 year olds, but it's probably more suited to a 10 year old's level). I wanted to learn pre-uni stuff like 'c' and c++ but they didn't teach that. I don't think they even taught Python.
The male teacher who I talked to on this matter was really boring and uninspiring. I didn't see how any of my classes would help me with my plans. The principal and secretary of the school kept on dragging me and my divorced parents into meetings because I was bogging down the school's stats. They really are just a bunch of useless paper pushers.
I'd like to volunteer to help primary school children or speak in high school assemblies, but it's impossible to do this, because the government-owned schools don't give a crap about what's good for people. Once I tried to sign up for Big Brothers Big Sisters, but the reference checks were impossible for me to pass. I think they wanted 3 people who had known me for 5+ years and it couldn't be my best mate or family lol. Nobody has really known me closely for 5+ years because I've never held a full time job for 12 months. Like the wojak/doomer meme I'm mostly invisible in this society.
The government won't fix this. What radical change to education could they possibly make? They can tweak a bit of administration, but the rotten core of the education system will remain.
Visual Basic is still alive in MANY company codebases across the world. It's not a great language for developers, but it's a perfectly acceptable first language and still used professionally.
Yeah, and is the basis of a lot of the more complicated scripting in Excel; which rightly or wrongly is a very heavily used tool in business. It is also a bit more involved than interpreting screen clicks etc. Its not fun to use, but its also not useless especially if it helps you learn the basics of things.