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Do High Schools Know What 'Computer Science' Is?
theodp writes "The first rule of teaching high school-level Computer Science should be knowing what CS is-and-isn't. Unfortunately, many high schools offering 'Computer Science' really aren't. Using her old California high school as an example, now-a-real-CS-student Carolyn points out that one 'Computer Science' class (C101) touted keyboarding 'speeds in excess of 30 words per minute at 95% accuracy' as a desired outcome, while another (C120) boasted that students will learn to use hyperlinks to link to other sites. While such classes fill a need, she acknowledges, they should not be called Computer Science. What's the harm? 'Encouraging more girls to take computer classes as they are now might have the opposite of the desired effect,' she explains. 'More girls might get the impression that computer science is only advanced application use, which might turn them off to computer science.'"
Oh yeah like word and powerpoint! I took a keyboarding course in the 9th grade, too. Pssh. I don't know if it merits its own subject, really.
It's always confirmation bias!
Call it "How to Get 5000 Facebook Friends Before Everyone You Know."
Then start the class off doing proofs on discreet math. They'll all cry and drop the class, and the whole world will be win.
While I agree with the basic premise she has presented (this might give the impression that CS is an advanced application use field of study), how is it that this misconception is going to predominately affect females? Is she implying that females are dumb? Is she implying that they are too superficial to look beyond a the name of a class offered in high school when planning their field of college study?
> 'More girls might get the impression that computer science is only advanced application use, which might turn them off to computer science.'
Substitute "students" for "girls" and you've got the actual problem. Thinking that it's only a problem for recruiting women into CS is a big mistake.
My prof drilled into me (and my degree matches because he fought for it) that it's Computing Science. Computer science is doing science on a computer -- Computing Science is is the science of computers.
Ah well, just some random nit-picking and pedantry. Either way, basic computer literacy is not "Computer Science".
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The problem is not limited to high-school. It was not until my post-grad studies did I start learning real computer science. Most of what I learned in my undergraduate studies was IT.
At its heart Computer Science is Applied Mathematics and is closer to Physics than IT. With that said I am currently working in IT as are many with advanced CS degrees so maybe that is where the confusion stems from...
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
In my experience, universities don't know what computer science is so it isn't a surprise that highschools don't. Most universities seem to think that programmers are computer scientists which is approximately like saying architects are civil engineers.
I'm not entirely sure most high schools know what math is, either. Or science in general. Canned labs and regurgitation of scientific facts are not science, and turn a lot of people off. I was one of those people until I was in college.
But to get on topic, no, they don't. If you aren't teaching programming or theory, you aren't CS. You are just a class about computers. I'm also a tad confused as to why this would "turn girls off" (or boys, or anyone). I suppose it would mislead them, but then what other degree would they expect to cover actual CS/programming? A lot of times students are in the wrong major because they have been mislead by whoever that it is about something that it isn't (psychology, for instance) but I really don't see what else there is, other than perhaps Software Engineering. (I understand this is about high school, I'm looking at the long run for these students) If these schools have AP Comp sci courses, those should set the students straight.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
In my high school we had two different programs after 2000. That's when the classes were first being created and a mathematics teacher wanted to have a computer programming course. They initially were teaching C++ without OOP principals before a teacher that actually had programmed came into the school and rewrote the curriculum. That was in 2004. I first took a programming course in 2004, as a freshman, with that teacher and helped show him what was missing. I had taught myself C++ from different books and guides online. From that point on the school has always had two programs under different departments. Business Apps is under Business(History Department) and Computer Programming 1, 2 and IB(International Baccalaureate):Computer Science is under the Math department as it should be. Coming from my learning and as I've gone into college and the workforce, my HS was lucky in that we actually DID have some people that knew what programming was, and was not. The only class that has gone back an forth between the two is HTML Internet Programming(a joke class, really). All that teaches(kinda) is HTML, some CSS, very very little JavaScript and Flash. That has been sent back over to the Business folks because the school wanted higher rates of students in it, and they always had more. Though, from other students I've talked to. As the OP writes, it is far too often that schools actually call stuff like this posted Comp. Sci. It's a joke to the students, parents and themselves.
I disagree. Teaching students the tools of the trade (IDEs, debugging, control structures, if....then...else) are the foundations of the Science. You are taught math the entire time in high school, and an advanced math program starts with the assumption that you know how to add, subtract, multiply, etc. Teaching kids, either in high school or CS101 gives them the tools to move onto and understand Binary Trees and Linked Lists..
Isn't this a bit like complaining that high school chemistry isn't really science, or high school physics isn't really science? Of course they're not, you need to have a certain set of basic skills and knowledge developed before you can do real science.
This is also where departments separate the men from the boys (and women from girls).
And the large furry creatures from Alpha Centauri from the small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
It seems like what we call "real computer science" (like algorithms or theory of computation) is actually math. I don't see anything scientific about it at all.
Programming seems more like engineering than anything else (sure, it uses algorithms; but not much more than building a bridge uses math, and we call would call designing a bridge "engineering").
The only things I can think of that I would call "science" are: (1) benchmarking a complex system to get some empirical results; and (2) troubleshooting problems.
I'd be interested to hear why we keep focusing on the word "science" when that seems like a relatively small part of what we do.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
I read the article and the issue the author seems to take with this is that the approach to upping the ratio of females in computer science was to herd them into "computer science" courses at the earliest age (high school). This might have the negative effect if that's your strategy. The summary used a really unfortunate clip of the logic that seems to imply that the girls aren't being treated any differently than the boys so they must be deficient at seeing through these classes. But the girls are being treated differently in an effort to balance genders in computer science. The big problem is that these courses designed to "turn on" the thirst for computer science in young women have little if anything to do with computer science.
My own anecdote, I went to a high school in middle of nowhere Minnesota and we had Computer Science AB advanced placement. It was about twenty guys, I don't remember a single girl. We learned C++ in very simple forms and when I was forced to take the typing courses I wanted to kill myself. Did you know that typing courses are often a requirement to computer science courses? I was dumbfounded. As if the fact that I wasn't hitting 60 words a minute was reason to prevent me from learning about pass by value versus pass by reference (one of the basic concepts we covered). Still, even that wasn't much computer science and seemed closer to "C++ in a semester" style of teaching. You knew a language but you didn't quite get the really generalized concepts.
My work here is dung.
Do High Schools Know What 'Computer Science' Is?
- No.
Do your employers know?
You can't handle the truth.
I hold a BS in Computer Science.
I believe the field should be called "Algorithm Development".
It is called "Computer Science" because it was computers that allowed the useful embodiment of many algorithms. But the reality is (often literally, during coursework), that the platform, hardware or software, is largely irrelevant to the mathematical development of algorithms.
Today, as the article notes, anything related to using computers is often labeled "Computer Science". Rather than trying to get the rest of the world to stop using a term that is actually somewhat intuitive, I think CS should change its label to something that is actually a more intuitive description for itself.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
They are useful skills in much the same way as knowing how to steer a car is a useful skill to an automechanic. They are, of course, important prerequisites, but to me, computer science, even at the high school level, should be much more than "How to use a keyboard 101".
When I took it in high school, we started with some basic theory of how a computer works, and then moved on to Pascal programming to demonstrate those concepts, along with good coding techniques, flowcharting and various other concepts that would, in fact, be valuable to someone looking for a career in computer sciences.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I didn't want to fall into the classic old geezer thinking that everything was harder back in the day...So I peeked at the curriculum for some of the local high schools. And damn, it was harder in my day. In my high school classes back then we learned about Turing and Godel and their impact on how computers are designed. We didn't write much code, but I remember blackboard sessions on sorting algorithms, queuing, floating point operations, etc..
So I wonder.. 25 years ago, did other adults look at the high school curriculum and think the same thing? In the 1960s there was a push for "new math" which apparently included set theory and base-n computation, both of which would be very helpful in computer science. And I can imagine that even though Simpson and Newton-Raphson methods were centuries old, the computers of the 1960s were not necessarily accessible to students.
It reminds me of a story by Roger Zelazny. There is a mythical creature that didn't have hands. It loved to play chess, but because of his lack of hands (and IIRC, lack of opponents), this mythical creature had to play chess games in his head. He got to be very good at mental chess.
The upside of this is that there are are some very bright high school students out there. Twenty five years ago the people who were interested in computers were just a handful. In my class there were five or so. In a given high school there are probably still that many but it's harder to spot them because typing classes are masquerading as computer science.
Wow.. this article makes me sad. I graduated from High school in 2009, and took all 4 years of computer science electives. The courses i took however were not "typing" or learning little HTML scripts. The first year we learned how to build a computer from ground up, installation of operating systems, and basic soldering skills. Second year we learned about setting up networks, configuring modems and routers and even learned how to create our own Cat5 cables. Third year was mostly about PC Troubleshooting, more advanced electronics principles, and reading schematics. for our final exam we had to read a schematic and build a radio on the component level. Fourth year the instructor wanted us to branch out and learn about computer science subjects that most interested us. We had to choose our subject, make weekly reports on what we have found and learned and demonstrate our understandings of the concept. There were only 6 of us to make it to year 4 but we all ended up doing something different. While I chose Linux and programming as my focus, we had robotics, web design, computer repair, network administration etc.. etc.. The funny thing is, I went to a regular public school in a small town of Georgia... You would think if a great HS CS education could be had here, California surely would go way above and beyond.
If you set the bar such that computer science in HS requires a high level background of math and computer skills, then you'll scare away the average student. Having a CS101 class in reality be a "introduction to computers" is perfectly fine in my book, as you don't want to start off with Day1: Introduction to Pointers. As that will scare of 99% of the non computer nerds. When i was in college (back in '93), there was a CS101, Intro to Computers and there was a CS102: Women in Computing.
While the first one was a "how does a computer work? How to use a computer?" the other class (CS102) was aimed specifically at women (and only allowed women to take). It was taught by our female professors in an environment to encourage women to pursue a college career in Computer Engineering or Computer Science. As a reference my CS+CPE graduating class in '98 had 2 women in it (and 100 men). While some women out there had the background in computers to jump right into the standard initial CS courses, many others were turned off by the daunting requirements and misconceptions about taking CompSci/Engineering.
This type of course layout is used in all sorts of curriculums. Ever take a cooking/woodshop/swimming class? They don't start with advanced techniques.
I recently volunteered at a local high school for a lunchtime talk for a CS club.
It was advertised as "Learn how to send secret messages to your friends that even the CIA can't break" or something like that, nothing about CS.
In 45 minutes (60 would have been better), they learned how to represent base-26-ish in binary (5 bits), do a XOR, flip pennies to generate a one-time-pad, and encode/decode a secret message.
Non-CS students showed up. No experience was required - I could have done this with 4th graders. Many left happy - it's not clear how many realized they just learned some computer science.
No computers were employed in this exercise. It was sort of silly that we met in the computer lab - an art room would have had better table space. A whiteboard was useful.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
My first experience with a computer keyboard was with a teletype-age master console on a Burroughs mainframe I operated back in the late '70s.
Not even God could have ever touch-typed on that machine, so I evolved a technique (that I still use) involving thumb and two fingers of both hands, plus (rather more recently) the little pinkies for shift, ctrl and enter keys.
Sure, I don't rattle out 800 words per minute (or whatever the standard is), but I don't need to, so I get by. I spend much more time thinking about what I am going to type than I spend actually doing so, and my accuracy approaches 100%.
Still, even that wasn't much computer science and seemed closer to "C++ in a semester" style of teaching. You knew a language but you didn't quite get the really generalized concepts.
You could say, he didn't teach you pointers.
[Puts sun glasses on]
Yeaaaah!
Amen. We had introductory computer science in my HS, and we had a class called... wait for it... "typing". We learned on manual typewriters. This was the 80s, mind you, and schools are usually behind the curve anyway. IIRC, there was some rationale about the manuals helping you learn better; but I bet it all boiled down to money. I wonder now if my loud keyboarding stems from the fact that I learned on a manual.
I actually don't recall what language we used in our CS course. It was probably BASIC. That's utterly unimportant as it should be in any introductory CS class. You're learning ideas, not languages. We watched a really cool video on sorting algorithms, and coded quicksort and several other algorithms. It was interesting to note that for a newbie, quicksort was a PiTA to code and debug, and actually seemed slower on these machines--I never got a verified sort to work during the time allotted.
Anyway, the whole idea of the guy above thinking that you should be made fun of for learning with Pascal is a bit silly. First, you were a newbie and probably had no choice. Second, if you're any good at all, the first language you learn won't cause brain dammage. I beg to differ with other famous experts in the field who say otherwise. If BASIC damages you, it's your own damn fault.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
There is no science in Computer Science. That isn't a bad thing, it just means that it isn't science.
Everything a high school student needs to know about Computer Science can be summed up with one sentence, "Computer Science is a branch of mathematics, so if the prospect of getting a math degree strikes fear into your heart, pick a different field of study.".
I graduated from high school back in 1997. I knew about two dozen kids (all guys, go figure) that were going to college for computer science. One got a degree, the others all switched (mostly to MIS). I tried to warn them, but they didn't believe me.
See that "Preview" button?
I know how to use a gas pedal, I must be an auto-mechanic.
I learned on a manual typewriter too. I love loud keyboards and got myself one of those Das Keyboards with the blank black keys. When I get to the end of a paragraph or I finish a good chunk of code and finish the SVN commit command I like to hit Enter with a big loud CHUNK!!!
That way the whole office knows that I am working. :-)
Hey now... I was in high school in the late 90s and our computer science class was centred around Turbo Pascal. I learned a lot writing Pascal programs, and for my final project my lab partner and I wrote a graphical RPG including an on-screen scrolling-text display we wrote from scratch. The year after I left, they switched to C++.
I know Javascript, BASIC, Pascal, a bit of Perl, but not any C. And while I feel that every CS student should come away knowing it, I'm also thankful to these other languages for teaching me the fundamentals of program logic.
While it's good to have some programming language in your back pocket for CS studies, the issue IMO is that those really are not "tools of the trade"... I hardly programmed at all for my own Master's in CS. The tools of the trade are pencil and paper mostly.
Now, programming language design and compilers is certainly a subfield of CS, and some of the most interesting languages ever have come from academia (thinking of Lisp, Prolog, Haskell)... but "programming skill" is not per se an academic discipline.
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Science is measuring the natural world, developing theories based upon data and then seeing the theory correct.
I do this all the time at my job - develop a theory about how the code actually works, and perform a series of experiments to refine my guess until is has acceptable accuracy. One might quibble over whether the code base is part of the "natural" world, but I'm certain it's not the result of Intelligent Design!
As far as whether CS is engineering: real engineers roll petards up to castle gates, all these johnny-come-latelys like train drivers are just abusing the term.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You're funny.
Teaching a kid an IDE is not Computer Science. But the you thought programming was computer science.
Silly monkey.
Although I suspect Torvalds, Stallman, Knuth etc. can "fix a computer,"
Actually, this is the biggest misconception of all. I'm currently a PhD candidate in computer science. I know a lot about algorithms, data structures, computational theory, etc, but I don't know how to fix MS Windows 7 when it doesn't do x, y, or z properly (except of course to install *nix instead). Granted, I know how to work the menus and dig through the options better than a lay person, but that doesn't mean I'm intimately versed in how Windows works, nor do I have any interest in learning it.
Computer Science seems to have lost its soul in some sense. At my university, if I approach a professor with any problem that is NPC, they immediately say "that's an Ops Research problem". Working on robotics algorithms? "That's the EE or ME department". It's been a real challenge to build a committee because most CS profs at this school don't think that CS covers anything more than AI and logic theories.
The point that CS needs to be defined is actually quite salient. Developers often complain that CS students can't program. Some CS departments are less concerned with teaching good programming practices and more concerned with teaching theory. Students expect the former and get the latter. Other schools consider CS to be the art of design. They focus on software engineering and often leave out much of the mathematical rigor in the process. Other schools focus on the logical and mathematical underpinnings, but don't teach programming or software engineering. Then there are the schools that teach only programming with very little else in the curriculum. Should CS encompass all of the above, or should it be a subset of those things? Is software development the same thing as computer science, or are they fundamentally different, somewhat overlapping disciplines? How does operations research fit in? What about numerical computation, high performance computing, networking, etc., etc.? The field has become enormously fractured and everyone, including Knuth, Stallman, Torvals, et al. has a different opinion about what it should be.
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
Actually, Java is a tough teaching language. Most high school and early college students don't have the ability to think abstractly about objects. The idea of "everything is an object" is a tough one for them. You often have to do a lot of "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" teaching to get them through the basics of variables, loops, etc. Pascal is a great teaching language because it allows you to teach the mechanics of structured programming without glossing over 90% of the language in the process. Once students have that part down, it's much easier to transition to something like Java.
Of course, just to keep the flame wars alight, I still recommend Ada as a teaching and production language. It's just better. (waiting for the troll mod now)
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
Uh huh... why we would have resolved the question of P==NP by now if only there had been better gender balance. What twaddle.
In other words you don't know. Well there aren't in any school I know of - but go ahead and provide some examples.
Well I've spent time in both hospitals and CS departments and my experience is that as a proportion there are significantly more women in CS than there are men in nursing.
Except there won't be any male nurses to fill that demand since they won't have been encrouaged to see that as an option. Oh wait... I see... a generation or so later the number of male nurses will fill the gap. So let's fix things for girls now, with the same special programs and encouragements of the last two or three decades, continue to ignore boys for the next generation or two and then things will even out? What amazing misandry.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
You == troll.
Okaaaay, so I'm the troll because I base my arguments on facts, and you're not because you build strawmen and can't be bothered responding rationally to simple arguments.
I'm pretty sure it's the opposite, because you are the one who based your argument on a lie (that there are no programs to encourage males to enter nursing) and then followed up by fabricating arguments I had never made, and claiming a conspiracy theory to subjugate males.
You do realize that simply making declarations doesn't make them true, don't you?
... and then they built the supercollider.
As a former and future CS professor, this issue is near and dear to my heart.
The conflation and confusion over what constitutes computer science is just as rampant at the college/university level as it is in high schools. Perhaps the "CS" moniker is even more abused in post-secondary institutions. At least those high school programs that were designed around the AP exam had *something* to focus them (I'm not wading into CS versus programming right now, just saying that the AP exam gave a concrete body of material that is at CSy enough).
Now certainly, CS is well- and correctly defined at R1 type schools and at the top 10 to 25% of liberal arts schools (the top 100 at Princeton Review or some such). It's not too bad at the top 5% of "master's" institutions (say top 50, but I haven't gone through the list carefully. I know there are VERY BAD examples further down the list -- say around 100. The "master's" category of institution is typically for schools that can't compete with R1 or quality liberal arts). [Note, those are my intuitive numbers from personal experience (I'm intimately familiar with about 15 programs in the broad northeast of the US at all three levels. I know the structure and reputation of another 50, but my comments are mostly based on those I have more personal knowledge of.)].
What makes the problem worse at the (weak) post-secondary level is that CS is turned into IT (or CIS) and the students wonder why they can't get jobs doing something other than MS system administration with a bit of "pluggy pluggy" networking and a side of "pointy clicky" databases. Of course, the same students shy away from anything 1. hard and 2. involving that evil, demonic subject: math. So, the schools take the path of least resistance and produce students who will peek their career in about 3 months (except for a few that have the natural political/business ability that will move up in management after 5 years).
*sigh*
I wish this were mere fancy. But I can name multiple schools, without stopping to think, that fall into this category. Sadly, almost any school that isn't good (as defined above) is going to be bad. Some of them are honest enough to name the programs CIS/IT and have a gutted/token CS department with two students; a few of the schools defined CS as CIS + two or four math classes; some schools just name it CS and let the dice fly. Fortunately, at some of the schools, there are folks working to improve things. But, it is an uphill battle with entrenched faculty who are tenured (can't get rid of them), don't have advanced CS degrees (aren't really qualified), are currently uncertain about the economy (have motive to keep earning money), don't have anything better to do (have motive to go to work), and may work for another 10-20 years (ugh).
The "how to use a computer" basics classes should honestly be part of home economics, just like being taught how to use an oven or any other common appliance. Some schools have beginner driving and auto repair classes - they're not Advanced Vehicle Engineering any more than how-to-use-a-browser is CS.