Apple's Tim Cook talks education, says he wouldn't want his nephew using social media
As part of a European tour to promote Apple's new university coding courses, the company's potentate sat for a wide-ranging discussion during a stop at Harlow College in the U.K.
The first port on Cook's voyage of chat was the utilization of technology both in and out of the classroom. Cook noted that while Apple has an interest in promoting tech as an educational tool, it's not necessarily always the best option.
"I don't believe in overuse [of technology]. I'm not a person that says we've achieved success if you're using it all the time," he said, according to The Guardian. "There are are still concepts that you want to talk about and understand. In a course on literature, do I think you should use technology a lot? Probably not."
Cook said that he considers social media usage among children problematic, though he didn't elaborate.
"I don't have a kid, but I have a nephew that I put some boundaries on. There are some things that I won't allow; I don't want them on a social network," he added.
On the role of coding in education and Apple's place in that field, Cook was more direct.
"I think if you had to make a choice, it's more important to learn coding than a foreign language. I know people who disagree with me on that. But coding is a global language; it's the way you can converse with 7 billion people," he said.
The company announced earlier in the day that an Apple-designed "App Development with Swift" course would be coming to nearly 100 European colleges and universities. Harlow is one of the universities adopting that curriculum.
The first port on Cook's voyage of chat was the utilization of technology both in and out of the classroom. Cook noted that while Apple has an interest in promoting tech as an educational tool, it's not necessarily always the best option.
"I don't believe in overuse [of technology]. I'm not a person that says we've achieved success if you're using it all the time," he said, according to The Guardian. "There are are still concepts that you want to talk about and understand. In a course on literature, do I think you should use technology a lot? Probably not."
Cook said that he considers social media usage among children problematic, though he didn't elaborate.
Apple "has a deep belief...that education is a great equalizer of people," Cook said.
"I don't have a kid, but I have a nephew that I put some boundaries on. There are some things that I won't allow; I don't want them on a social network," he added.
On the role of coding in education and Apple's place in that field, Cook was more direct.
"I think if you had to make a choice, it's more important to learn coding than a foreign language. I know people who disagree with me on that. But coding is a global language; it's the way you can converse with 7 billion people," he said.
The company announced earlier in the day that an Apple-designed "App Development with Swift" course would be coming to nearly 100 European colleges and universities. Harlow is one of the universities adopting that curriculum.
Comments
I totally understand Tim's sentiment and his call-to-action to get everyone engaged in coding to at least a level of understanding what it is and how it is used to help solve real world problems and make things work. There should be no mystery around what computer coding is and how it fits into our modern society and industry. Just like most people understand what human languages are and how they work within societies and industry - even if they never intend to write a novel or learn Mandarin Chinese they still understand human language and are proficient in one variation.
Good to see Tim Cook engaged in an activity that I'm sure is very personally satisfying to him.
Learning how to program a few lines of code doesn't mean you can single-handedly program an app like FCPX. And while we all need to start somewhere, it's important we go into learning code with realistic expectations. Apple wants kids to learn to code because coding is hard, even in SWIFT, and Apple wants more coders in the future (great coders, A players) to help press their product line ahead of the competition. "ANYONE can code" sounds nice but it isn't reality. If we abandoned our private lives completely and focused exclusively on learning code, then perhaps more people could code. But most people don't or can't do that.
The day AI progresses to the point we can begin "programming" computers via voice commands is the day "most people can code." I think of it as using a WYSIWYG web design tool to get my creativity on the web without having to resort to HTML or JavaScript coding. It's the superiority of 1984 Mac 128k's GUI versus text "code" of DOS or CP/M. Computers need to get more powerful in terms of their software easy-of-use to empower more people to achieve things that were once unthinkable. And in the end that won't transform us into the Bynars of Star Trek. Advanced computing technology should help push human beings to a higher level without changing us into a computer.
prob because he’s the rich uncle who’s paid for everything
"I don't have a kid, but I have a nephew that I put some boundaries on. There are some things that I won't allow; I don't want them on a social network."
When his nephew spends time with him without his parents around—which is common—then it's Cook's rules, not his parent's rules for most most things—which is also common. If you have siblings and those siblings have children and you have a good relationship with those siblings this is commonplace. Even within the Big Brother/Big Sister programs and the like or with grandparents the same dynamics apply.
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Even Silicon Valley parents who work for social media companies tell me that they send their children to technology-free schools in the hope that this will give their children greater emotional and intellectual range. Many were surprised to learn that Steve Jobs did not encourage his own children’s use of iPads or iPhones. His biographer reports that in Jobs’s family, the focus was on conversation: “Every evening Steve made a point of having dinner at the big long table in their kitchen, discussing books and history and a variety of things. No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer.” Our technological mandarins don’t always live the life they build for others. They go to vacation spots deemed “device-free” (that don’t allow phones, tablets, or laptops). This means that America has curious new digital divides. In our use of media, there are the haves and have-nots. And then there are those who have-so-much-that-they-know-when-to-put-it-away.
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The tyranny of normal distribution is that we run the world as though it was populated entirely by Bob Cringelys, completely ignoring the Don Knuths among us. Americans tend to look at research like George Miller’s and use it to custom-design cultural institutions that work at our most common level of mediocrity—in this case, the number seven. We cry about Japanese or Korean students, having higher average math scores in high school than do American students. “Oh, no!” the editorials scream. “Johnny will never learn FORTRAN!” In fact, average high school math scores have little bearing on the state of basic research or of product research and development in Japan, Korea, or the United States. What really matters is what we do with the edges of the distribution rather than the middle. Whether Johnny learns FORTRAN is relevant only to Johnny, not to America. Whether Johnny learns to read matters to America.
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With the majority of corporate IT still failing to demonstrate a return on investment and hindering business productivity more than it helps, anything new is worth a try. I like these initiatives as they allow SMEs to render their ideas as succinct, relevant products rather than assumptive, functionally bloated, over-engineered nonsense we have to put up with from IT; authors write books, not typesetters.
If nothing else, coding ourselves leaves us with the ability to better articulate our requirements and appreciate the complexities the tech teams face.
In this case, I don't disagree with him, but I wouldn't presume to dictate to a nephew what they can and cannot do unless I had adopted them.