Google engineer Neil Fraser got a bit of a surprise when he visited Vietnam recently to see how schools teach ICT： kids in 11th grade are capable of passing the notoriously difficult Google interview process.

Fraser blogged about his trip， which ostensibly seems to have been a fact-finding mission involving him turning up unannounced at various primary and high school classes to see what the students are being taught.

Wandering into an 11th grade high school class he found kids were studying the following problem： Given a data file describing a maze with diagonal walls， count the number of enclosed areas， and measure the size of the largest one.

Suitably impressed， Fraser then asked a senior engineer back home how the question would rank on a Google interview. Here’s what emerged：

Without knowing the source of the question， he judged that this would be in the top third. The class had 45 minutes to design a solution and implement it in Pascal. Most of them finished， and a few just needed another five minutes. There is no question that half of the students in that 11th grade class could pass the Google interview process.

Vietnam exposes its kids early on to computers and programming， with schools， teachers， and parents apparently eager for them to learn in a way that isn’t mirrored in the US， or presumably the UK.

Fraser finds that computer classes start with the basics in Grade Two， by the following year students are learning how to use Windows XP—apparently ubiquitous in the country， while Grade Four sees them begin programming in Logo， starting with sequences of commands， then progressing to loops. By Grade Five they are “writing procedures containing loops”.

By comparison， at San Francisco’s magnet school for science and technology （Galileo Academy） 11th and 12th grade students struggle with HTML’s image tag， while loops and conditionals were “poorly understood”， and computer science homework is banned by the school board， said Fraser.

If nothing else， this snapshot into the Vietnamese school system shows what can be done despite limited funds.

谷歌工程師尼爾·弗雷澤在近期的一次越南之旅中被越南學(xué)校在信息通信技術(shù)方面的教學(xué)給震驚到了：越南11年級(jí)（高二）的學(xué)生有一半可以通過谷歌面試，而谷歌面試的測試題可是出了名的難。

弗雷澤在自己的博客中記錄了這次越南之旅，而這更像是一次發(fā)現(xiàn)之旅。弗雷澤秘密到訪了幾所不同的越南中小學(xué)班級(jí)，研究其計(jì)算機(jī)科學(xué)課程是如何教學(xué)的。

當(dāng)他慢步走進(jìn)11年級(jí)的課堂，他發(fā)現(xiàn)學(xué)生正在解決的問題是：根據(jù)一個(gè)由斜面組成的迷宮地圖數(shù)據(jù)文件，數(shù)出封閉區(qū)域的數(shù)量，以及計(jì)算出其中最大一個(gè)的面積。

讓人吃驚的是，之后弗雷澤回家問了一位高級(jí)工程師，讓他比較一下這道題目和其他的谷歌面試題的難度。結(jié)果如下：

在不知道題目來源的情況下，這位工程師認(rèn)為越南學(xué)生的題目難度排在前三位。這道題目要求學(xué)生在45分鐘內(nèi)用Pascal語言完成，大多數(shù)學(xué)生完成了題目，只有一小部分學(xué)生需要多給5分鐘時(shí)間來完成。毫無疑問，有一半的越南11年級(jí)中學(xué)生可以通過谷歌的面試流程。

越南讓孩子很早就開始學(xué)習(xí)計(jì)算機(jī)和編程的課程，學(xué)校、老師、家長顯然都希望用一種不同于美國或英國的教育方式來培養(yǎng)孩子。

弗雷澤發(fā)現(xiàn)，越南學(xué)生從2年級(jí)開始學(xué)習(xí)計(jì)算機(jī)基礎(chǔ)知識(shí)，到3年級(jí)就學(xué)習(xí)如何使用Windows XP——顯然是在全國普及，4年級(jí)學(xué)生學(xué)習(xí)編程的標(biāo)識(shí)代碼，從命令組再進(jìn)步到循環(huán)結(jié)構(gòu)，到5年級(jí)學(xué)生就要“編寫包含循環(huán)結(jié)構(gòu)的程序”。

與之相比，舊金山的科學(xué)技術(shù)磁石學(xué)校（伽利略科學(xué)院）的中學(xué)生的科技課程是這樣的，11和12年級(jí)的學(xué)生還在學(xué)習(xí)HTML圖像標(biāo)記，而包含循環(huán)結(jié)構(gòu)和條件結(jié)構(gòu)的程序?qū)W(xué)生們來說還是“難以理解”的，根據(jù)學(xué)校董事會(huì)的規(guī)定，學(xué)校禁止給學(xué)生布置計(jì)算機(jī)科學(xué)相關(guān)的家庭作業(yè)，弗雷澤這樣說道。

如果只看這一點(diǎn)，越南教育體系的簡介正在向我們展示如何在資源非常有限的情況下培養(yǎng)出優(yōu)秀的計(jì)算機(jī)精英。