Is IT education in school really worth it?!? 🤔
Posted by Familiar_Track_2855@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 14 comments
Hey everyone! I’m a 15-year-old boy diving into web dev, game dev, cybersecurity, and a bunch of other tech stuff. I know it’s a lot to juggle, but I just love learning new things! 😅
Here’s what I’ve been reflecting on about the IT education I got at school:
- My IT textbook did cover some basics like HTML, CSS, and even Python — which are super important, especially for web dev. HTML and CSS are must-knows! But honestly, back then, I wasn’t even interested in coding.
- What really bugs me is my teacher never told us how well these skills can pay off 🤑 or that Python is a major language used in AI and machine learning. Either she didn’t bother or didn’t even know where Python is applied.
- Don’t get me wrong, maybe I’m just skeptical, but school didn’t teach me the essential, real-world stuff about IT. Now, in 10th class, we have LibreOffice, communication skills, and PC maintenance — which are okay, but not really what I’d call “IT.”
- And get this — we had to write Python code on paper! Like, seriously? How do you learn coding without a screen?
Bottom line: I feel like school didn’t help me at all in what I know now about these fields.
So I’m curious — are there others who feel the same? What was your experience with IT classes in school? Let’s talk about how schools are lagging behind, especially when it comes to IT education!
dylantrain2014@reddit
Was this written by AI?
What do you actually want to know? Nothing you’re said is cohesive.
Dragoonslv@reddit
I think you might be right about him being AI.
Familiar_Track_2855@reddit (OP)
Hey, no AI here — just a 15-year-old trying to make sense of what school taught me about IT. I’m genuinely curious about how others experienced IT education and if schools could do better. If my post felt messy, sorry about that — I’m just learning how to express these thoughts! 😎😎😎
ewgna@reddit
Not trusting those long hyphens
No-Significance5449@reddit
Its the predictable emoji usage for me.
tabasco_pizza@reddit
This was for sure AI
WorstPapaGamer@reddit
So… there is a difference between IT and CS.
What you lean in school is NOT enough to land a job. This is so important that people do not realize this. You need to make projects outside of school. Just going to a good school and graduating with a 4.0 will not get you a job.
CS is very theoretical but the stuff they teach you can be applied to modern languages.
Familiar_Track_2855@reddit (OP)
Ohhhh Ok but sir/madam my argument was they never developed my interest or taught me the right way ya know so I was asking that only!😅😅😅
WorstPapaGamer@reddit
It’s not their job to do that. Especially more so in college. Most of your professors (90%) will not develop your interest or teach you the right way.
They’ll teach you THEIR way. If you don’t understand what you’re saying YOU need to learn on your own.
I know you’re still young but this is a huge mentality shift that high school students struggle with in college. They expect to sit through lectures and be able to get 90+ on all exams. That’s simply not true at all.
High school you really can get away with just listening to the teacher. But college will be a wake up call for you if you treat it like high school.
SomeRandomFrenchie@reddit
Your teacher is probably not a IT professional to start with. It is the case in many countries because these classes are not frequent enough to have specialized teachers. Thus, this person knows only what they have been asked to teach. Tu purpose of those classes is not to make you a professional at all, those are only introductions, so you know it exists.
Nobody in their right mind that knows even a little bit about the tech world will tell a high schooler that programming makes money. Because of many reasons, the first one being that it is a field where people that are not passionate break their teeth hard, second one is the field is saturated and extremely competitive. Going there for the money is a huge mistake. Of course it can be a motivation factor, but as the sole motivation, it is a bad idea.
Moreover, IT means information technology, it is an incredibly vague and global term that regroups various fields. So learning to use excel is IT, electronics is IT, web development is IT, system programming is IT, etc. The term computer science is a bit more restricted while still quite large. Programming is CS. Learning excel is not.
Familiar_Track_2855@reddit (OP)
Thanks for your reply! and for understanding what I was saying!
and I agree with what you were telling now I get it IT != CS got it thanks!
MrThinkins@reddit
I think it really depends where you are in life and what you are trying to achieve, for example, if you are specifically talking about IT, then yes, getting the certifications and that are very worth it. However, if you are talking about Computer Science (like programming and such) it is a bit more tricky.
Collage is a great way to get a well rounded education if you get a four year degree. However, all of the stuff that is taught in collage for CS can be found online and self learned for free or cheap, you just might have to work a bit harder to learn everything that you want to know.
Also, writing python out on paper is weird, however, there has been points in the past, when i was starting to code, where I would write sudo code out on paper to try to figure out how to do things without worrying about syntax, but I haven't done that in a long time.
Low_Big7602@reddit
Okay, chatgpt
iamthebestforever@reddit
Google is free