I've said it I don't know how many times, but the curriculum for IT in this country is wrong, it teaches the wrong things IMO and those things it does do right it does to an insufficient level.

Talk to many kids and a PC is a games console, internet surfing tool and a glorified typewriter. Very few people know how to get the most out of the computer that's sitting on their desk, opting to manually do everything rather than learn a little and automate processes.

I honestly don't know what the current IT curriculum is.

However, when I was taught IT at school, amongst other stuff, we learnt: word-processing incl. mail merge; creating complicated spreadsheets using formulae I've long since forgotten about; desktop publishing; creating and managing databases; basic programming; and that program where you create pathways and loops and it comes out with a result and we used it to create a traffic-light control system.

What do they teach kids at school these days?

1. Sit down.
2. Turn on PC.
3. Use Office.

I hope I'm wrong.

My memories are much the same as yours. There was also a lot of discussion about the hardware and what did what, where.
We also did programming involving basic attempts at AI and I built a basic first person game in HyperCard.

Unfortunately, you're not.

The most advanced thing we do is creating a magazine, which entails making a front cover in Fireworks, and slapping a load of Google Images pics together in Publisher. Instant A*.

We did an introduction to programming in A-Levels, also we went over how to use Office and some basic hardware, for many this was a repeat of GCSE just in more detail.

Certainly my younger brother and sister have no idea about mail-merge and both only have a basic idea with what Excel can do, and no thought as to what it might be capable of.

I've created some bloomin amazing Excel spreadsheets that auto calculate different values and stuff for analysing the fields that are used in our database.

I have to say though, I wouldn't have had a clue how to build it without a lot of programming background to help me.

No - it’s Word, PowerPoint and Excel at primary schools. My other half runs an animation club, where they use the school computers and cameras to make animations, but that is extra curricular. I believe that it SHOULD be in the curriculum. Show the little buggers that computers are fun. They can become disillusioned with cubicle life at secondary school.

There is a big difference between computing and IT.

If you study IT at school then you are going to learn how to use Office. If you learn computing then you're going to learn the more in-depth stuff.

I stopped IT in year 9 (age 14) and continued with computing and Cisco. We did all sorts of stuff and it was very useful. Scripting, number conversions, hands-on practical sessions, troubleshooting exams, etc etc

Ah, so they've integrated secretarial studies with a computer, cool!

The IT needs to be scrapped and everyone needs to do computing if almost every company insists on putting a machine infront of almost all of it's employees.

i will agree, IT in schools is crap..from highschool all you use is office, and in my school a little of the serif programs (to show us there is an alternative) but in GCSE we didnt do much except make a database in access and website in serif webplus (i think) there was no coding at all and it was very boring, theory was even worse, having a total of about 2 hours teaching what was inside the computer, half of which was describing the difference between ROM and RAM, its all a bunch of crap to be honest, A level, well its the same, were making a website and a database, OH JOY

(btw dont care about spelling or punctuation as iam ill and havnt got glasses on..)

Thankfully our IT lessions was always taught by the Head of the IT Dept. whose knowledge of IT was far greater than the collective (IT) knowledge of all the other members of staff. Unfortunately, he was also a pr*ck - something which I feel was down to his short stature (we called him "The Penguin").

Unfortunately, some of the other students were taught by teachers with a rudimentary knowledge of IT and were perplexed by the simplest of problems. This would undoubtedly mean some kids were not paying attention or lost enthusiasm.

That sounds familiar.

When I did "computer studies" way back in 1984, it was taught by maths teachers. The head of IT (Bignob) was actually very good, but I didn't have him. I had a middle aged woman (Smith), who had no knowledge of the subject at all.

There was no MS Office back then, but there was VisiCalc and Star Office and many other important applications. We never even got to see them!

We mostly learned how to draw pictures of Babbage machines, and how to draw a teletype. We drew a lot of pictures

Are you sure he didn't get the nickname cos he was a Linux fan? That would explain his frustration too