Computer Science Education in Canada

[JWHooper]

I am currently in United States right now. I was curious if the Canadian High Schools offer programs related to Computer Science. In US, the high school that I go to right now does not offer any programs related to computer science (although they teach basic computer applications, like Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). So, does the Canadian High School offer computer science programs?

[Nick]

well not speaking for all schools but the school i go to (austin its a catholic school) they curently teach computer sceine gr 10,11 and 12 and also comp eng gr 11 and gr 12

[billyfung]

all depends on which highschool you go to, same may have really good programs, some may not have any.

[Cervantes]

Standard Ontario curriculum is to teach Computer Science in grades 10, 11, and 12, using the Turing programming language. Of course, not all schools will offer these courses, as the above two posters have alluded to, but the fact is that the curriculum is there if they want to teach the courses (if there is interest among the students) and most do.

[McKenzie]

Are you asking just out of curiosity, or is your family thinking of moving to Canada? If it is the latter then knowing the school or town you are looking at could give you a much better idea of what to expect, but as everyone else has said, you should expect some level of CS to be offered.

[PaulButler]

Like math, if you really want to learn computer science in high school you should learn to teach yourself. Depending on a teacher to learn will limit how fast you can learn. I went to a few programming competitions back in Halifax, and the people who learned only through school were at a disadvantage to the people who were self-taught. From the Ontario students I have talked to, it seems like the CS courses in Halifax (at schools that offer them) are about the same quality as the courses here in Ontario.

Anyway, my point is that you shouldn't worry or feel disadvantaged if your school doesn't offer CS, just grab some books and start coding. I actually chose not to take CS in high school, because I knew most of the stuff and I thought I would be better off taking a course where I would learn something new.

[Dan]

If you do end up in a high school that dose not teach computer scince you are not totaly out of luck. When i was in grade 12 my high school droped computer sci for grade 12 however i was able to take it as an indepent study with the guidence of one of the teachers that used to teach it.

Also my brother had this same issue and he was given the option to take it as an online corce that counted for the same high school credit.

Offten you realy have to push the guice office and conclers to help you into finding a alterivel soultion but there are ones. Don't acepcte no as an awser.

Also high school students can some times take colege corces as long as you get the aproval of the registers office and the corses is not to full. In grade 10 and 11 i took serveral online programing corces at a local colege (aucatly i was not far off geting one of there crefitcats or what ever they called there one year programing porgram), This option however costs moeny.

[Tony]

high school level Computer Science is not a requirement for a CS degree at a University - many enter the field with no background

although have having been said, it is obviously in your best interest to pick up an independent course, book, forum, blog, anything and start ahead on your own. This is the type of field where you need to show initiative.

[iluvchairs112]

most Canadian high schools offer computer science, although I know in the school I attended in grade 9, it was a really small school and didn't offer it because hardly anyone wanted to take it. However if that is the case, then you can usually convince guidance to let you do something else - like an online course or correspondance course (if you tell them exactly what you want). Although the school I attend right now has computer science (gr 11 and 12) as well as computer engineering (gr 11 and 12), and also a general tech course for grade 9 and 10 where you learn computer science and construction tech and communications tech. We also have some business courses that are really helpful, for background information (that's how I started to become interested in computers).

Most universities don't require computer science though, but it is recommended. If you participate in a computer science contest and do well in it then I'm sure that'd make up for a lack of taking computer science. And if you do well in math / science / business / tech courses, then that would be good as well.

[Euphoracle]

Personally, I'd suggest learning the language on your own, possibly with others of similar interests alongside anything your school also offers. For me personally, my school goes at an incredibly slow rate, and teach it in a poor fashion. For example, they tell you that everything that you're writing has to be memorized because it just works, rather than teaching the underlaying concepts behind it. I'd be perfectly fine not using a computer to learn the course, and instead learning the theory behind programming. However, my highschool teaches programming in this fashion:

1) Header, the most important thing, so they say. You have to list the author, class, course code, date, project name, "This program takes as input <input>, it <process> and it outputs <output>." You cannot use "it" and you must specify everything every time, pronouns cannot be used.

2) Create your folder: LastName FirstName ProjectName.

3) Write your code out on paper or, (because of begging, pleading, etc) in notepad. Your code should be written out in full to determine the logic behind it (I'm fine with this really, but for the first month we had to do it on paper, which is a hassle, mainly because we could not use loops, etc to calculate the squares of numbers from 1-12 inclusive, lots of paper, etc. )

4) Write your program in Java. It cannot contain anything you haven't learned, whether you know it or not (IE: Methods, classes, objects, libraries, variable types other than int, String and double) Everything must have a variable. And "hardcode" will be a deduction. ( You cannot use the value "100" when rounding numbers, it has to be a constant called ROUNDING_VALUE or ONE_HUNDRED, and other silly things like that)

5) Test your program. (Teacher tests it with realistic data, input, etc. and then with totally out-there random misc data, oh, and we're not allowed to errorcheck, so yeah)

6) Print out your code and attach it with written (or print out notepad code) and marking scheme.

7) Hand it in and hope you didn't make a stupid mistake.

8) Get it back to see that what you tried to do to match the format/question exactly was wrong and you have to modify it for all your other "programs".

Other than learning basic concepts and syntax, there really isn't any other benefits of doing it in school. A lot of the resources used are out of date, and sometimes contain methods of doing things which can be done a lot better in another manner (but you can't do it any other way because you haven't learned it that way + it's "wrong" ).

I, personally, am trying to deal with it and get through it. The downside to learning it yourself is that it's very difficult to break habits that you may have. For example, I used to put braces like this in Java:

class myClass {

But we're not allowed to use them on the same line, so it's difficult to break the habit (however I do it the other way in C so it's weird that I'm having so much trouble with it ).

Also, I like to do things very efficiently and I'm really, really, really having trouble with the current copy/paste method of doing things, and not being able to optimize code as well as I can.

Other than that, it's one less useless elective I have to take, and something, that I hope, will eventually get better.

Short answer: Not required, but possibly an asset.