I was asked for help by my good friend to assist her nephew on his Web page design project. I first asked him what lessons they have discussed in school, so I could match the level of what the teacher taught to what we would be doing. As usual, it included <html>, <head>, and <body> elements, as well as the tables, anchors, images and lists. I was just disappointed when he said they still use <font> tags for changing the size and color of text, and use the <body> attributes background and bgcolor for placing background images and color on the page.
Of course, as a standardista, I hated the fact that I am forced to use deprecated elements and attributes on Web pages. So, I decided to make a statement on this blog hoping to be heard (or read) by computer, web design, and web development teachers in any level of education.
Please, please update yourself on what you know and teach about Web design. HTML 3.2, which you are teaching your depolama students, has been replaced by HTML 4.01 almost 9 years ago. That, in turn, has evden eve nakliyat been reformulated to become XHTML 1.0 in 2000. You should also know that HTML should only be used for structure and CSS be used as its presentational layer.
Web design and development education standardization is one of the things I’d be pushing for in my Web standards advocacy. Education starts in the school. And, if teachers do not know what to teach their students, no advancement would ever happen. In my humble opinion, this principle of educational advancement doesn’t only apply in Web education.
We are still in the process of talking about forming a formal Web standards organization in the Philippines. If you feel the same way as I do in this blog entry, and love to fight for Web standards compliance, join us in our discussions to help save the Web and its users—for interoperability, accessibility, validity, and semantics.
Comments
10 responses to “Deprecated HTML Still Taught in High Schools”
What school is this? They should look at Opera’s Web Standards Curriculum. Makes things a lot easier to teach.
Thanks for the link, Ia. 🙂
But, should I really name names?
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I’m speaking from someone from the education industry and we all know that institutions really need to focus on in-service trainings (trainings conducted to update or further improve a teacher’s knowledge). Only a few teachers have the opportunity or even the financial capabilities to pay for workshops to get updates in their respective fields. Besides, how old is your friend’s nephew? I don’t think they teach CSS to first year high school kids.
OH MY GOD. Your post just made me feel stupid. Haha. My younger brother is currently in high school and there was this one quarter where they were being taught the basics of HTML. Same thing – the font color font size you mentioned in your blog entry. That’s what they were teaching them. And sad to say… that’s the kind of “basic” HTML I know. Haha!
Poyt, I think he’s 14 years old / in 2nd year high school.
Gel, madali lang naman matutunan ang Web standards. I can’t provide links for now, pero search ka lang on how to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and you’ll have a good start to designing Web pages without using HTML for presentation/design. 🙂
OMG, I’m an instructor too but I’m currently teaching my students the HTML 4.0 and some CSS though some of my co-instructors are not really updated.
Schools should really update their school computer curriculum because the internet is evolving every, what? A year?
Sadly, many college courses aren’t any better. I guess it’s all a matter of funding and teachers use what course material is available (books and what not) But I guess they could always just say screw the books and create their own course material.
I kinda agree on what you said.. when I was still in high school, our teacher even asked us to create a mini website then we hafta explain why is it like this and that.. it’s as if we’re on a college thesis defense thingy..