＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
From April 2020, “programming education” has become mandatory in elementary schools along with “English language education. By the way, many people may not have a good understanding of what “programming education” is. Therefore, we would like to introduce programming education in this issue.
１．What is “Programming Education”?
Some people may mistake the term “programming education” for training programmers to make full use of difficult programming languages such as C language or Java.
However, there is no way such specialized education should be provided in elementary schools. Elementary school teachers are not even comfortable with “English education,” and there is no way they can teach such a difficult subject.
In short, this is an education that teaches “programming thinking,” that is, the ability to think logically and solve problems, or the ability to give shape to ideas.
In addition, there will not be a “subject” called “programming” like “Japanese” or “arithmetic”. It is an attempt to implement “programming education” through all subjects.
２．Problems and Challenges of “Programming Education
I feel that this “programming education” has been implemented as “mandatory in elementary schools from 2020” without sufficient preparation.
What are the problems and challenges?
（１）Problems
①Inexperienced teachers
② They do not know what kind of teaching materials to use.
③Programming education may be neglected because it is not evaluated by an examination.
In reality, however, it is expected that “programming tools” such as “visual programming languages” will be adopted, which even elementary school teachers can easily learn how to operate.
（２）Tasks
① Equip computer classrooms and provide one tablet for each student (hardware environment improvement)
② Avoiding confusion caused by the proliferation of programming education support tools (software environment improvement)
③ Exchange of information and devising of instructional systems and methods
④ Necessity of verification of effectiveness
先生のための小学校プログラミング教育がよくわかる本 [ 利根川 裕太 ]
60分でわかる！ プログラミング教育 最前線 [ プログラミング教育研究会（監修：CodeCampKIDS） ]