As someone who has been in the "ICT" business for some thirty-odd years, it has always fascinated me what people mean when they say or write "computer-literate". Does it mean the ability to write programs? Fix the printer when it jams? Or simply write a letter on a PC, fill in a spreadsheet or access the Internet?

Clearly, the first two examples are nonsense. Programming is a career, like accounting or plumbing or catering, which are learned as a specialist topic at university or trade school. Fixing a misbehaving printer is like emptying the bag on a vacuum cleaner - you have to understand the basic physical moves, but they come from an instruction manual.

The third option can be learned in an hour. Seriously. Try it with an eight year-old.

What the article does illustrate is a profound misunderstanding of what information technology is and does. One of its most fundamental objectives, which it will achieve in the not-too-distant future, is to make itself invisible. To turn itself from being the last word in esoteric (and those who remember the men-in-white-coats approach of the sixties will know what I'm talking about) to being a completely background function, such as electricity.

The capability is available now, to allow us to access and use information technology in the same way as today we turn on a light without having to know how the power station works. We already do this every time we log on and Google - no-one needs to know how which operating system Google uses, or how to log on to a Google server - it just happens.

The very last thing we need is for a school curriculum on the topic. The gap between determining the scope of a course, its definition and its eventual presentation will inevitably cause it to be out of date on day one.

In much the same way as this article, which proposes solving a problem that hasn't existed for years.

I agree with the article, the children could then educate the teacher on the various ways to utilise simple programs, perhaps in return for the teacher providing access to the more traditional three R's.

I am old enough to remember when CSIRO had a large building in Townsville, which was airconditioned (and seriously cold), and contained a large computer, about half the size of the average suburban house, which used punch cards. Very few people then were computer literate to any degree, however most COULD read, write and count.

Today, I suspect that the average computer game console has greater memory and data processing capability than that CSIRO computer. most homes have at least one computer, and the majority of people are computer literate to some extent. However, there are now huge numbers of people that are illiterate, innumerate, or both.

I am only in my 30's, but isn't progress wonderful.

IT literacy will be very important for our future.

I completely disagree that programming is a narrow skill. Every student leaving high-school should know how to write a simple computer program, spreadsheet formula, database query and/or hypertext document:

FOR I = 1 TO 10; S = S + I; NEXT I

=IF(A1>"!",INDEX(list,A2,3),"-")

select name from contacts where postcode < 3000

select <B>name</B> from <I>contacts</I> where <B>postcode</B> &#60; 3000

An analogy from mathematics. Students have access to a calculator, but they still need to know how to add. It follows that they may have a user-interface but still need to know how that interface, in general, works.

I see the example that David Latimer provides as key to this issue.

>>An analogy from mathematics. Students have access to a calculator, but they still need to know how to add. It follows that they may have a user-interface but still need to know how that interface, in general, works.<<

There is absolutely no need to know how to construct a calculator, only how to operate one. Unfortunately, teaching the general public to program can only result in them trying to build their own calculator, which is a total waste of time (someone has already built one, and it works) and can only create frustration.

This has already happened in business, with the waste of literally billions of dollars. Companies have employed battalions of programmers in order to build an almost exact copy of what the company next door is building with their own programming hordes.

The essential focus has to be to make the technology disappear completely, so that no-one is even tempted to write their own system. Buy it, rent it, download it, but don't write a single line of code.

I agree with Pericles' first post. Home PCs and internet access are widespread, my children and their peers have been computer literate from an early age - my son was our in-house PC manager from the age of 10 in 1992, and still knows much more than me although I first used a (room-sized) computer in 1966.

Re calculators, I do think its important to understand and to be able to practice maths without calculators - in this instance, my facility/ability is far better than my kids, all of whom have studied maths to a much higher level than I did. Without this facility, it's difficult to have a "feel" for numbers, to know intuitively when things aren't right, to understand magnitudes and relationships. I recall meetings with some eminent, mainly academic, economists, all with high numerical and modelling skills, where several major errors which were immediately obvious to me had escaped their attention.

Pericles is right that technology tends to disappear. Most of the younger generation have a 'feel' for the technology that they have grown up with. They don't have or seem to need to have an understanding of how it all works. Advances in software and hardware also facilitate in lessening the need to know.

There is a tendency for those with vested interests in computer technology to empasise its complexity and highlight problems that for most don't exist so that they remain relevant. In reality those in the industry that are helping to make the technology disappear are the ones meeting the market.

Chris's suggestion seems like an attempt to build up an industry around a problem that is fast becoming no existent.

Valerie