To be honest, I’m not sure why the test is requiring the > operator in the first place? It’s not necessary in this instance. I might open a github issue on this.
Actually, the first time I see it introduced is step 8 of Learn CSS Flexbox by Building a Photo Gallery. The problem is it just tells you to create the selector but does not explain why or how it works. I have seen this kind of thing multiple times in the new curriculum. Something is thrown in just to get the design to look right without actually creating a teaching moment.
To the OP’s point, actually, the “how do I do this, I’ve never seen this before” is common to all of programming. There are a lot of times that I have to do something I’ve never done or have to maintain code that works in a way that I’m not familiar with. Here at least you get a hint. Making the learner spend some time googling is a good thing, imho. It’s good training.
And it wouldn’t be possible to create curriculum that covers every possible permutation of HTML, CSS, and JS and all the libraries that are taught - by the time you finished, much of it would be obsolete (re: the React curriculum). I think the point is to teach the basics and empower the learner to do some researching.
But if true, when did they actually say “in this project you will need to do some researching?”
If they said that explicitly just once at the start then it would be perfectly fair.
I always that that was part of that RSA approach, I thought that applied to all the curriculum and your future life as a developer. Maybe that needs to be reminded, but in my experience some people just have a really hard time understanding that, they expect to be spoon fed everything. I don’t know how to communicate that effectively and in a way that the people that need it most are not just skipping over it. I’m going to guess that there is a fairly strong direct correlation between people that eagerly google things to sate their curiosity and people that read and consider things closely.
If my son’s teacher gave him an assignment that included things he was not taught, and never said he was allowed to google things, I would suggest that, but I would also be mad at the teacher for either not teaching whatever it is or for not telling the kids that googling is allowed. Just being honest.
I think googling something I didn’t understand is not the same as googling something that wasn’t taught yet. The second one needs an explicit prompt.
Maybe it tends on the school level. As an adult, most of my classes in engineering and music involved a lot of outside research, involving things that weren’t directly taught. That’s why I always encouraged (at least with adult students) to be curious and investigative. As a person with an insatiable curiosity and a love of learning, I guess maybe I am sometimes caught off guard by people that don’t think the same way.
Maybe we need a better way to communicate it. (How many times do we have to beat people over the head to google things in the forum?) Maybe some people need a footer in the curriculum, “If you aren’t sure, google it.” For me, that was always and assumption, reinforced by RSA.
I would remind you that the courses are open for anyone 13+ yrs of age and that some people, even older ones, come to them with no experience in being taught in a “dynamic” way. I once had someone tell me (in the forum) that they were expecting me to shout at them as that is what their teachers always did. An explicit statement of how to deal with the unknown would be a good idea in my view.
The descendant selector is shown in step 37 in Learn Basic CSS by Building a Cafe Menu. This looks to be the first time it is shown and explained (before flexbox).
I don’t see the direct child selector explained or used before the challenge step mentioned in this thread. I’m guessing it was not even considered. I think the order of the challenges and subsequently, the order of all possible CSS is a hard thing to get completely right. I’m not super surprised that we can get that wrong from time to time.
As said, it also shouldn’t really matter if all we care about is the styles getting applied and not how they get applied. If the challenge step is about using a specific selector, that should be checked. If the step is just about the styles getting applied the selector shouldn’t matter.