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The US Economy Needs More "Cool" Nerds
Hugh Pickens writes "Steve Lohr writes in the NY Times that the country needs more 'cool' nerds — professionals with hybrid careers that combine computing with other fields like medicine, art, or journalism. Not enough young people are embracing computing, often because they are leery of being branded nerds. Educators and technologists say that two things need to change: the image of computing work, and computer science education in high schools. Today, introductory courses in computer science are too often focused merely on teaching students to use software like word processing and spreadsheet programs, says Janice C. Cuny, a program director at the National Science Foundation adding that the Advanced Placement curriculum concentrates too narrowly on programming. 'We're not showing and teaching kids the magic of computing,' Cuny says. The NSF is working to change this by developing a new introductory high school course in computer science and seeking to overhaul Advanced Placement courses as well. The NSF hopes to train 10,000 high school teachers in the modernized courses by 2015. Knowledge of computer science and computer programming is becoming a necessary skill for many professions, not only science and technology but also increasingly for marketing, advertising, journalism and the creative arts. 'We need to gain an understanding in the population that education in computer science is both extraordinarily important and extraordinarily interesting,' says Alfred Spector, vice president for research and special initiatives at Google. 'The fear is that if you pursue computer science, you will be stuck in a basement, writing code. That is absolutely not the reality.'"
The U.S. needs to kill off the idiotic youth that will soon be our main work-force. Out of curiosity, I asked a 20 year old full time student who the former vice president of America was for the past 8 years was.. I get a "?????".
When asked which celebrity recently just passed away.. it was an immediate response full of confidence and knowing. There ya go.
Where I work we eliminate former high school football players during the interview. Nobody with that sort of background fits in with us. You were the enemy then, and you remain twice the enemy now. Yes we were picked on, AND you idiots were part of the whole problem. You want to fix the problems with under staffing in the science, medical, and computing fields? eliminate high school football.
Not sure why you got insightful for regurgitating the jocks versus nerds stereotype. Should have got "inciteful."
Jocks and nerds are not a parallelism. I played sports my whole life and still studied mechanical engineering and learned Basic, Fortran, Perl, PHP, SQL, electronics etc... Sports - especially football - teach valuable skills such as personal determination, belief in yourself to achieve, social skills like team work and dealing with situations where one must follow direction, the ability to see the big picture rather than an introverted masturbation of self interested elite-ness, and a slew of other skills necessary for a *career* outside of the programmer's cube.
What successful nerds and talented jocks have in common is passion and determination. That's what kids lack today. Schools train our kids to be socialists waiting for a handout creating expectation of rewards for failure. Media and peers encourage kids to be apathetic; to wait for someone else to solve their problems or to obtain their goals. Look at the current issues facing the Obama administration - its outright responsibility- shift and accountability-shift from the individual to the taxpayers - especially the *successful* taxpayers.... No one seems to be accountable for their own failures!
To be good at any skill requires dedication, involvement, and perseverance. A well rounded nerd is simply a rare and unlikely individual due to the need to avoid those things that distract one from reading, studying, and experimenting.
If we really want "'cool' nerds" we need to eliminate any idea that someone else is going to earn/provide a living for us. We need to correct American ideas about entitlement and destroy concepts of "every one gets a trophy and all that other wimply crap. We need to give Nobel Prizes to people who actually accomplish stuff rather than people we hope will accomplish stuff. And we need to give computer jobs to Americans and keep American companies in America.