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ACM Urges Obama To Include CS In K-12 Core
jmcbain writes "The ACM issued a set of recommendations supporting Barack Obama's stated goal of making science and mathematics education a national priority at the K-12 level. The ACM is urging the new administration to include Computer Science as an integral part of the nation's education system. 'The new Administration can play an important role in strengthening middle school education, where action can really make a difference, to introduce these students to computer science,' said ACM CEO John White." Is CS such a basic subject, at the level of science or math, that it makes sense to (try to) teach its principles to every elementary school child?
I'd rather see something more abstract like symbolic logic classes rather than programming classes.
No sig for you!!
Dear ACM and Computer Science Teachers Association, both of which I am a professional member,
STOP.
Please.
I know constitutional matters fairly well. I've got degrees in computer science and K-12 education. I see things from a younger yet informed, educated standpoint (I am in the first generation to be tested under the PA tests which satisfy No Child Left Behind).
Stop campaigning the federal government for educational things. The federal government has NOT been granted the right to deal with education in any way. Its current educational meddling in state-run schools should serve as evidence of this, and should be unconstitutional. Continued federal campaigning will only increase the amount of influence the federal government thinks it has and tries to have on public schools, an influence which is detrimental to the individual needs of students and the societal needs of their communities.
Instead, my dear ACM, please spend your time and money asking state departments of education, which move far, far quicker than the federal department of education, to include CS in curriculum. The federal department of education moves as a brontosaurus would, but the state department of education moves like a triceratops--still slow, but certainly quicker and more aware of its surroundings than a brontosaurus would be.
More effectively would be a grassroots campaign among ACM members to try to convince local school districts that CS needs to be included more in curriculum, especially in city and suburban districts where programming jobs are more available.
Asking the federal government to intervene is asking for something which will simply worsen the situation, and something which cannot be undone.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
I think "computer literacy" is more in order. In fact, just the other day I helped yet another person who didn't understand that documents written with a specific program didn't live exclusively inside that program. Understanding fundamentals like this are necessary to interact in a competent manner with computers, which are becoming a necessary tool for more and more fields.
Without these basics, "Computer Science" is somewhat hopeless; I would rather have these basics be required. One thing that needs to be improved is the ability for people inclined towards computer science ideas to be exposed to advanced concepts . . . but it should not be compulsory. I am a CS major, but had my first programming class my 2nd semester and thought I was really computer-savvy specifically because I knew that files were independent of the program that created them. However, I was interested in programming for a while before that and just never had the opportunity to explore it.
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You do realize, don't you, that we're talking about K-12 here, not college?
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I agree - up to a point. I don't agree that schools are all doing a miserable job. You know the phrase "garbage in, garbage out"? It really does apply to K-12 students.
I've taught 10th-12th grade for 4 years now at an inner-city style school (59% minority rate, 78% free/reduced lunch), over a variety of Math/CS subjects, including Precalculus, AP Calculus, Honors Physics, and AP Computer Science. You'd think I would have the top of the stack, the elite students, if you will. If I do, it demonstrates the problem with some U.S. Science & Math students in the 21st century: the students at some schools (at least mine) have no desire to put in the effort required to master a difficult subject.
Students are looking for classes they can pad their schedule with that look good on college transcripts, but which require very little work. If it's an AP class, they want the AP teacher that gives out extra credit like candy, assigns 3-5 problems a night for homework, and gives "open book" tests.
I came from a tougher school of thought, so in return I expect work from my students; I assign 1-2 hours worth of work every night, every test is "closed book", every quiz is unannounced, and there's no such thing as extra credit. You should hear the crying of unfairness and cruelty. (The funny thing is for the 4 years I've been at my school, my AP class has had the highest passing rate of all AP courses taught at our school.)
My AP Comp. Sci. course, for 3 years in a row, was filled with ambitious MySpace, Facebook, or other "texters" who thought a CS course was going to be something where we sat around all day and wrote the next "How L33T are you?" quiz. Some thought we'd be writing the next Line Rider game the 1st class. When I tried to get them to understand OOP, or to think of what a Model & View architecture really meant, it blew their minds. A simple assignment (almost pointless, but done anyway to try to get something out of them) of picking an everyday real life object and writing down all of the things it's made of and things it can do, netted me about 20 papers all describing a pencil as being made of lead, eraser, and plastic, which can write and erase. Deep stuff.
You should have seen how well they handled writing a simple "Guess a number" game. Basic IF structures (logic) completely eluded them.
It's not their math skills that was hurting them (although you'd be scared to see how many AP Calculus students I routinely teach who can't grasp working with reciprocals or fractions in general work) - it was their inability or lack of desire to employ critical thinking skills. If it wasn't something that could be put on the back of an index card (to cram the night before) or typed into their cell phones (to cheat from the day of the test), they wouldn't do it.
We have to get past that laziness, that lack of work/study ethic, in K-12 education before we tack on anything else. CS, done well, cannot be learned in any meaningful fashion if there's no desire to use reasoning, deductive logic, or problem solving skills.
I pray it's not this bad at other K-12 institutions around the country, but I'm fearful that it's the same everywhere. It's the chief reason I'm pressing onward with my MA or MS to get my foot into the door of college teaching. I know you still get your share of lazy students there as well, but they might just want to work hard and pay attention, and I won't feel like I'm just spinning my wheels every day I try to teach another young mind. And I'm fully aware that I'm not helping the problem, if I'm even able to, by "bailing" on the K-12 arena, but there comes a point when your work begins to feel like an ice-cream salesman standing in Fairbanks, Alaska.....you just have to move your stand to somewhere you can get something done.
P.S. This year the county canceled my AP Comp. Sci. class and rolled my BC Calculus course into my AP Calculus course as an "independent study". Due to budget cuts, having 12 or less students means the class gets folded. So much for even the wannabe texters...
Londovir
NO!!! I like the ACM, but this is totally WRONG.
Rant 1:
Bring MATH up to par with other nations. Its acceptable for me to say "I can't do math" but I dare not admit "I can't read" or "I can't do english." Its cultural as well as systematic.
The US students have mental blocks on math (NEVER mention math,) they don't understand the use of experimentation, and have been shuffling paperwork and jumping thru tutorials for so long they are shocked when I get my hands on them... Their demands for the old-school methods have resulted in the degradation of other courses over the long term (a few like myself hold out against the trend - its not just the natural understanding gap increasing between instructor and student that makes me see a downward trend.)
I've seen inner city schools doing things ONLINE that create disadvantages for poor students without internet or computer access. If you really want to help, get kids access to a safe internet and a computer that facilitates exploration and experimentation.
Philosophy of Science would be widely useful. Actually, Critical Thinking -- one could fit in Science, Logic, and even some Ethics into that class.
Rant 2:
The computer is just a tool for teaching things that is completely misunderstood and under utilized while at the same time being thoughtlessly applied to education without any supporting evidence for its educational benefits!
The only real work on computers for actual learning that I've seen was done in the 80s and early 90s with LOGO, MECC, and Carmen Sandiego. These all tried alternative methods to use the computer as a tool to teach or build critical thinking skills... NOT teach CS. (Yes, LOGO did do everything.) More RESEARCH based tools should be encouraged like the brain-research that led to EyeQ or Nintendo's Brain Age. Speed reading would seriously change lives.
I've seen girls learn to type fast on their cell phones. They don't need a cell phone typing course to do that. They shouldn't be required to WASTE time learning typing on a computer when they will eventually figure that out. This is a great example of how misused computers in schools are (not to mention the waste of typing-only computer labs when 100 year old typewriters would suffice.)
Rant 3:
Bigger areas are being ignored. they are more important.
Creativity is a whole other area sorely lacking; my mother is an art teacher and the stories she tells sound like we are entering an age of mindless consumer drones. Studies have always shown that right-brained classes like art resulted in better scores in the left-brained classes... Until they wreck these courses (and for 8 years boy they have been trying) those courses will continue exist. I would HATE to see right-brained courses be replaced with more left-brained courses.
BTW: Einstein played an instrument.
Promotion of curiosity wouldn't hurt either... Some form of Omnibus course wouldn't be a bad idea; especially, if it helped find interests that could be leveraged in less interesting courses.
How about Business? Accounting? People can't manage their own credit cards and its pathetic. Nobody learns how to do taxes or run a business... and the LAW or even the constitution-- forget it...
Rant 4:
Students are institutionalized to memorize and do tutorials. Programming problems without example code is a huge break from the mundane norm of the current educational system; however, instead of jolting students with something new to make up for a degraded system (not that the US system was that much better in the past) why don't we improve the existing subjects to be more engaging? I managed to ace 3 years of spanish without learning any spanish! It was the perfect example of the path of the current system.
I DO think learning C++ should count as a foreign language. Would be a better use of time for most students; for all the reasons the ACM states. (If one must learn a language thinking it helps your english then why not learn latin then?)
Rant 5:
Obam
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TAOCP? Computer Org? Are you kidding? I'm a 3rd year CS student, and most people who went to my high school, probably including myself, could never get through ten pages of Knuth. The math background to start out with theory just isn't in place in high school, where the highest level math class available was entry-level Calculus. I learned C++ on my own in middle school without ever having heard of "Discrete Math", and learned Java in high school before I even knew what a register was. But once I knew how the high level stuff worked, I could then delve deeper into another level and learn a little more, and then a little more. You have to learn incrementally, not by starting a HIGH SCHOOL kid with the hardest (albeit "fundamental") stuff and working your way from there. That's like learning trig simply by giving the students a bunch of proofs to look at before they know how the mechanics work.