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Obama Wants Broadband, Computers Part of Stimulus
damn_registrars writes "President-elect Barack Obama announced in his radio address that his administration's economic stimulus package will include investing in computers and broadband for education. 'To help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools.'
He also said it is 'unacceptable' that the US ranks 15th in broadband adoption." No doubt with free spyware and internet filtering. You know... for the kids.
Yeah, sure will provide a ton of jobs to the Chinese who manufacture these things.
Not that I believe investing in education is bad, but passing it off as an economic stimulus is disingenuous.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Was that really necessary to get the story across?
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
It is a fallacy that you need computers in schools. Teach the kids reading, writing and math skills, the rest can come later. Computers are a drain on schools with already tight budgets. We went to moon with engineers and scientists who did not have computers.
Conservative, mod down for violating
"To help our children compete in a 21st century economy"
It's bad enough that I have to compete with cheap "offshore" labor, now I gotta compete against someone willing to work for pokemon cards??
It would be great if the local cable or phone company could run their lines just 1 block further from my nearest neighbor so I could get broadband.
Maybe Obama can make it happen!
You're nothing; like me.
He also wants to use broadband for health care facilities.
Since I know that most of you don't RTFA and the summary is lacking that point, I figured I'd point it out.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
In grade school, we had a handful of Apple IIs (for AppleWorks, Oregeon Trail, Reader rabbit, and a few other educational titles). In high school, the library had a couple computers for the card catalog and CD-ROM encyclopedia, and there were a couple GW Basic/word processing rooms. So why do students need the internet for learning? Wikipedia is nice, but most schools are (rightfully) banning it. Instead of teaching math, should they just give out calculators and provide training for how to press the buttons on a McRegister? If people are graduating high school with a 6th grade level education, all the broadband in the world won't help them.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
No doubt with free spyware and internet filtering. You know... for the kids.
Slashdot: News For Nerds (That Can Never Be Happy About Anything)
How many people here are truly opposed to some sort of filtering in computers in school? While the idea of some sort of imposed filter on my internet connection at home is very bothersome to me, I don't have a problem with attempts to keep inappropriate material off of computers in schools.
My biggest concern about it would be that generally the filtering systems aren't that hard to work around, so hopefully the school systems won't waste money buying into a really expensive product that ends up not working any better than a cheaper alternative.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
1. Take a bunch of money out of the economy.
2. Shuffle it though an inefficient bureaucracy .
3. Put what remains back into the economy.
4. ???
5. Economic recovery.
This is the same argument folks in the US use to justify the lack of public transport.
The fact is that the US is 80% urban and suburban, so getting decent services to those folks (in both broadband and public transport) shouldn't be a problem. What is the problem, with internet connectivity anyway, is the deeply entrenched telecoms companies with their local monopolies.
Well, despite being an Obama supporter (as am I), Taco is being pragmatic. Eric Holden could be his Attorney General, and he's all for net censorship. Plus this is the Democrats we're talking about; the old guard is salivating at the prospect of getting all their old nanny state legislation back on the plate.
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
I work with lots of good Chinese and Indian software engineers. Most never saw a computer before University. They did have a rigorous and old-fashioned education, with lots of math and logic.
I also know talented hackers who got into programming as kids/teenagers, and benefited from the fast dev cycle of Apples, TRS-80s, etc.
But giving kids the latest and greatest computers is not going to help anything. The important stuff can be learned on a 486.
Chinese and Indian schools value the academic achievers, while American schools value the funny, the athletic and the socially gifted. That is why those countries are beating us.
No offense, but if you think that you can do Math on a calculator, your arguements for better education are kinda weakened. Calculators (yes even graphing ones) are a way to get around the tedium of simple arithmetic, a way to skip past the dark ages and get to the meat of critical, logical thinking.
I analyze water flow patterns as it relates to insurance risk for a living... a mathematical job to be sure. When calculating the trajectory of a projected river overflow, I grab my scientific calculator, and I think back in sympathy for my 4th grade self, who was tortured by moronic ciriculum focused on creating mindless times table memorization, which I could not do...
The main advantage humans have over other animals is that our history and our technology make it possible to learn in one lifetime what could not otherwise be possible in a hundred lifetimes. "Back to basics" is how humanity self-destructs. Give them a pile of computers, have them teach the teacher.
To be honest, *private* school didn't help me. (I don't think I'm qualified to speak for everyone else who attended my school. I'm not that familiar with how the rest of their lives worked out for them.)
I attended a private school between 7th. grade and sophmore year of high school. Today, looking back, I can safely say those were 4 of the worst years of my life. The combination of faculty who insisted on running things in a fascist military style, while often doing a questionable job of teaching the material, plus the abundance of "spoiled, rich kids" did nothing for me. Switching to a public school, after MUCH begging and pleading to my parents, was the BEST move I made.
The school systems DO waste a lot of people's time and money. I just don't think it's always fair to single out "public schools" as the only problems. Private schools currently have the ability to make themselves look good "on paper" by refusing or kicking out anyone who doesn't help them keep an artificially good image. They also tend to hide behind their religious affiliations. (EG. "Come on now, Johnny. Your school can't be THAT bad! You're being taught by Catholic brothers!")
When Obama announced that he was going to start the largest public works program since the Interstate system, I thought he might be talking about an interstate high speed rail network.
Though, after looking through his proposal, I don't see anything about high speed trains. I think a train network would kill many birds with one stone:
- it would provide a fast alternative to flying, which I hate.
- it would cut down on carbon emissions since trains are much more efficient than cars or planes.
- it could do for the country what the interstate system did in the last half of the last century.
- it would create lots of jobs spread out across the country
If this was a story about Bush no one would be complaining. But Messiah Obama, on the other hand... he's untouchable.
Did you miss the (rather conspicuous) use of the word "broadband"? Our network infrastructure sucks quite badly, and if he's talking about upgrading it, that's a lot of domestic blue-collar jobs.
If POBE is really serious, he'll look at giving us real broadband, like the premises fibre that Korean consumers enjoy. If he does that, Corning will have to de-mothball a factory or two, and a lot of people will be needed to dig ditches and pull cable. Sounds pretty stimulating to me.
Growing up, I was greatly helped by the teachers in my public school. My third grade teacher for noticing how I aced the reading test and decided to give me the advanced reading test. I aced that one also. I credit her for putting me on a track where I enjoyed learning instead of being frustrated in school. It is quite possible that all of my success in life could be traced back to her in some form.
Since public school helped me, I guess your "never helped anybody" claim is false.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Oh my Gosh. Here I am the most right wing guy on slashdot and I'm about to go and defend Obama's proposals for infrastructure spending in general, and national broadband and school computing in particular.
a. ubiquity creates new industries. If broadband is something nearly everyone has in the USA, then, you have a much easier time making a business case for a new kind of service. The USA has built railroads with federal help before, knowing that putting railroads would pump the economy, and it did. Then, roads did the same thing. Broadband won't be any different.
b. computers in schools works. Yes, a lot of kids play games on school computers but there will be those kids who are not as well off but interested in learning to program that will use them. I know I'm grateful to all the computer stores and schools back in the 1980s that let me learn programming in the lab and I think that there's other kids like me out there.
Note that I wouldn't restrict this to just computers. I would like to see schools have shop classes with real presses, CNC machines, and other tools of the art so that kids can get some hands on real things prior to joining the real world.
c. My stock retort to other conservatives that would oppose this government spending would be, you had no problem spending 2.5T on building schools and broadband in Iraq, but why can't you support that in the USA?
d. Hands on experience in computing and manufacturing is a national security issue. The USA needs to know how to manufacture its own goods. I would offer as exhibit A, World War II. It's handy for national security when you have a ton of manufacturing centers that can be quickly converted to produce for wartime needs. Indeed, has the USA had a better manufacturing base, maybe we wouldn't have had to wait for five years and four thousand dead to get decent armoured vehicles into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By extension, those who pine for the old cold war days with Russian and for a stronger NATO should also be reminded that a part of our military obligation to our alliance partners is to have an economy capable of sustaining manufacturing in the event our allied economies are destroyed. It benefits Europe if the USA is capable of manufacturing its own products as that know-how can be shared with the continent.
So yeah, I think Obama's on the right track with a big infrastructure stimulus. I think Republicans would be better suited to argue what to build, rather than not to build at all, given that they already blew several times Obama's figure on rebuilding Iraq.
This is my sig.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0883617.html
Please shut up. You have no clue what you're talking about. It's almost like you need an education. While education is part of the doctrinal system, the reality is that you have more chance of success at whatever you're doing whether the degree gets you a foot in the door or if you meet other people in your field and develop relationships. Even without all that, you typically make more money with a higher education. These facts escape you because you are too lazy to learn before speaking.
Almost every single technological breakthrough has occurred where? In government or university research labs funded by the state. You would not be typing on a computer and sending a message through the internet without it. The Human Genome Project was a government research program. Every time you take a flight you're riding in a modified bomber, researched with government funds.
So with all due respect, shut the fuck up. Really. Your ignorance is the problem, not spending money on education.
There are two ways out of a recession as large as what we are facing:
That's a myth. War is not good for an economy.
What the Second World War did for the U.S. economy was to turn the nation into a place of shortages and rationing-- food rationing, gas rationing, even tire rationing... a lot of things didn't have to be rationed, because nobody had money to buy things like new cars.
The one "good" thing that the war did for the U.S. was to give people a rationalization for the shortages and ration-coupons: they were sacrificing to win the war. The economy was terrible, but people felt good about scarcity, because it was for a cause.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
...why don't you give us teachers:
--Money for books and basic school supplies (paper, binders, text books).
--Salary budgets so we can have more than one specialist (Gym, Music, Art, reading) per 4 elementary schools. These specialists spend their lives going from one school to the next
--Librarians. Most in our district were 'let go' due to budgetary reasons and now parents/volunteers are doing the work. Parents/volunteers are no replacement for someone with 20yrs of experience as a librarian.
--Raises so we can live within 30miles of our school (same goes for Firefighters and Police officers).
I don't need computers when I'm teaching YOUR kids how to read and write, when I barely have enough for books and have to buy school supplies (dry erase markers, paper, binders) out of my own pocket.
Obama is talking about broadband because it's "Sexy". It wouldn't get any attention if he said, "I'm going to make sure all of our teachers have enough textbooks, paper and supplies to teach our kids how to read, write and do arithmetic." Why doesn't he say this, because schools are funded at the state level.... and the towns/states referendums for tax increases to pay for this equipment (books/pencils) are voted down, year after year. The only schools around here that have sufficient supplies are in the higher income towns because the parents are willing to donate $5000....
You know that saying about lies, damn lies, and statistics?
You imply you know that saying, but then proceed to ignore it. Speedtest.net is nice, but what does it have to do with broadband adoption? Furthermore it is unreliable as an indicator of average speeds in a country, since the sample is self-selecting: only people who are interested in their speed will measure it, which would more likely be people with high-speed connections.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Maybe you should talk to your administration and union before asking ME for more money.
Why, in addition to my property taxes, do I have to provide a mandatory school supply list designed to keep the teacher in chalk AND kids who can't afford to buy their own crap? I give to charity in church. "charity" in public school is just a hidden tax.
Four years ago when my local school board was crying for more money, I attended one of their open hearings. I asked quite simply, have you done any auditing internal or external of current spending. The answer was 'no'. The referendum didn't pass. Yet, the darn fire department got their first new truck in 20 years (ok, 18, but still).
In exchange for higher pay, are you willing to work 8 hours a day doing community service in the summer? The union screamed high holy murder when this was suggested.
In summary, look in before out. You might find a more receptive crowd around election time if you can demonstrate real belt tightening and real reform efforts aimed at the primary mission of educating children instead of bureaucracy growing and union power building.
Of course, I know you specifically are not the root of evil, but as a poster child simply asking for more money is NOT the way to go.