[radiac]

It may be of interest that the author actually has a degree in CS, as well as her postgraduate teacher training (I was at university with her). As you say, I think her point was that because she now works in education, she may not have kept up with the latest specific developments in the industry (new languages, libraries, tools etc), but she has a lot more knowledge about how to teach general CS skills to students, so that they are able to go out and learn modern specifics themselves (which of course will have changed significantly in the time they finish their education).

I think a lot of HN readers are missing the background to and context of this article though, which is that the author's talking about the UK secondary school system (11-18 year olds), which has been going through significant changes in the way computer science is taught.

When I learnt IT/CS at school, the correct answer to "How do you secure a computer" was "Make sure it isn't near the edge of a desk and there are no cables trailing across the floor" - answers involving passwords and firewalls were actually marked as incorrect. Formal education before university provided very little information which was actually relevant.

In the past year or so though, the government has changed the curriculum to be more practical and relevant. However, my understanding is that a lot of IT teachers didn't have a background in CS, so although they were happy at the level of tidying cables, they lacked the technical knowledge required to explain the new syllabus. That's insultingly simplified and generalised of course, but you get the idea.

Because the new syllabus was brought in in a rush following much political fanfare, questions were raised about how to bring these teachers up to speed in a short amount of time. I haven't followed the situation closely, but I believe that one solution which was pushed by government was that the industry should step in to save the day, despite the fact that they know sod all about teaching, and that their skill sets are often too topical and transient to be of any actual use to students. I don't want to put words into anyone's mouth, but I think that's a large part of what has led to this post, and re-reading the article in this context may shed a different light on it.