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NYC To Open 1st High School Dedicated To Software
stephencrane writes "NYC is to open The Academy for Software Engineering, with a focus on software design and college preparation. It'll be a 'limited, unscreened' high school, which means admission won't be tied to grades or test scores; solely on interest (and presumably a lottery, once words gets out)." Would you want to go (or have gone) to such a school? Would you want your kids to attend?
This sounds like a trade school. High School should be about learning how to think and process information. Once you've learned how to learn you can go on to learning a trade. Its bad enough so many schools are now about being able to pass tests.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I think I would have jumped at the opportunity when I was in school.
However, looking back, I don’t think it would have been a great idea. I’ve said it many times, but if left to my own devices, I would have spent most of my free time glued to a computer. As it stood I had a few non-computer geek friends who would figuratively drag me out of my basement every once in a while and looking back, I had a lot of fun.
Maybe I would be a slightly better programmer .. but I think I would have missed out on a lot of important experiences, and more practically, development of social skills (which I’ve found are becoming more important as I’ve progressed through my career).
In other words, diversity in peers is a good thing. Not having to “deal with” people who are outside of your interests and being surrounded by like minded individuals may sound great, but that kind of narrow focus so early on just sounds like a bad idea.
Where in India is "NYC"? Isn't that where all the software jobs are?
I would think the worst possible place to compete with a country having a cheap cost of living would be in one of the most expensive cities in the world, so I hope they aren't talking about new york city, new york state...
Would you want your kids to attend?
Heck no, my generation is the last one to get a domestic programming job. Kind of like coal miners don't let their kids become coal miners.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It'll be a sausage fest of geeks with bad enough social skills. How about we through in some poisonous snakes and asbestos insulation since we're going to torture these kids?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
"college preparation"
So, more standardized testing that does absolutely nothing to actually prepare you for college?
If I was still in school, the only reason I'd try to switch over to this one is if they cut that BS.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I don't understand focusing so narrowly on software engineering which really isn't that difficult.
High school and college are times to learn the best that has been thought and said, to become a full person who's in contact with civilization; it's not a job training program. You're supposed to read the Western canon, get a foundation for higher math, learn what people are like and how the world works from reading history, play sports, and even socialize.
Computers are interesting but they just aren't that hard (and you know it, too).
Just sayin.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I bet they will have a very good football team.
Apparently computer code is patentable in the U.S.. I would prefer to see my kids build successful carrers for themselves rather than be some corporate slave code monkey.
Like this is going to actually do much to raise the bar in NYC, a school system notorious for having "teachers" who are shut up in a room doing nothing, pulling down six figure salaries because union rules don't let the government fire them. You want to fix things? How about a combination of privatization and allowing public (government!) schools to actually fire teachers and much more easily release "problem kids." By problem kids I mean:
1. Disruptive behavior.
2. Unwillingness to do work.
3. Mommy and daddy have a habit of terrorizing the the teachers and administration when they don't get their way.
School that lets kid take a wider range of math and science courses, and potentially more advanced "computer science"? Sure. School devoted to "software design"? No thanks. The focus is too narrow. Honestly, I'm not sure I'd want my kid surrounded by kids whose interest (or whose parents' interest) in "software design" (at age 13) is so strong that they'd attend a school devoted solely to it.
Technical high schools are where instead of saying "kids, there are an infinite number of things you can do with your life", instead they say "there are like eight things you can do".
I would not send my kids to this school. I would not even encourage them to go into software, at least not until employers start respecting software and IT more and quit lowballing on pay, and great a better working environment.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
3 big reasons:
1. The last thing a geeky student needs is a school full of nobody but geeks, leaving them completely unprepared to deal with all the non-geeks of the world. Those non-geeks are also known as bosses, possible lovers, friends, family, etc.
2. Education should make someone capable of doing more than just their jobs. A software developer benefits from reading Shakespeare, learning about the American Civil War, or studying Spanish or French or German or another language.
3. Massive gender imbalance.
I am officially gone from
The "Joel on Software" guy is involved with this, so he's plugging an activity of his own.
There's no programmer shortage. Businesses want "just in time" employees with exactly the skill set they need this week. Then they whine when they have to pay market rate for them. They're not willing to retrain their own people, or hire competent people with related skill sets and send them to training classes. Anyone who's competent in at least two programming languages can learn a third in a few months.
(Actually, the headache today is learning APIs. Everything seems to come with an API with hundreds to thousands of functions, some of which work, some of which sort of work, and some of which don't work at all. The documentation usually consists of examples rather than a reference manual. Worst case, it's a wiki.)
The more educational choices parents have for their kids the better.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that people are starting to figure out (at attempt to remedy) the fact that the U.S. is falling far behind in Math and the Sciences. Still, I'm concerned about a crop of young people reaching voting age without at least a basic understanding of History, Government, and Literature. After all, these people will reach voting age around the time they wrap up their studies in secondary school. Shouldn't they at least have a basic understanding of the duties of citizenship before they venture into the world and take on those new responsibilities?
I also understand that not all students can pursue post-secondary education and that they should leave secondary school with at least a start on what it takes to get a decent paying job in today's competitive environment. Still, I wonder if hard knowledge (being able to write a simple program in C# for example) is better than a thirst for learning and the tools to pursue that thirst. I can tell you that I would rather hire someone who really wants to learn and knows how than someone who can do some simple programming. After all, both are going to need to learn a ton before they're really ready to contribute in an enterprise environment. My money is on the person that shows a knack for the learning part. I wish more companies would value that desire when it comes to people entering the workforce.
Coding has been around for about half a century now, and this is a first on a hs level I think... but... what about doctors, scientists, and other higher education professions, why no hs for them? Coding requires a certain thinking ability, everybody has it, but it seems to be developed at different levels. I dunno why they singled it out though, what about the hs experience? Coders tend to not make very good football players, women? sparse and unfortunate to the stereotype, mostly undesirable. Hs is as much about personal growth and development as it is about learning something useful. I get the desire to produce highly talented coders and to get kids started early on them, but this may be a bit much. I'd rather see cisco and java/.net offered as part of the existing hs curriculum in a consistent manner, than dedicated schools that are devoted to the trade.
Also... say the school is unable to replicate the hs experience? We'd be pushing kids out into college / work force w/o proper social skills. Virginia Tech anyone?
Hopefully this really isn't so narrowly defined that a solid general education isn't provided. It might turn out kids that can code but would make for poor software engineers. It's essential that you understand the user as well as the problem domain and how they operate within it. That's a skill that would be very much hindered by hanging out in such a mono-culture.
However, I doubt they really mean for this school to be 90% math and computer science. It's an interesting experiment that may actually prove useful. Too often in secondary schools the "bad" students will wield an undue influence over the effective education of what would otherwise be "good" students. This comes in the form of peer pressure to be a deadbeat (intelligence discrimination), classroom disruption, etc.. By segregating students that actually care, want to and are motivated to pursuit a career in software development from the "losers" these "good" kids might actually stand a chance to get a decent if not quality education.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I like the idea of unscreened entry, I had to fight to take what few classes that were available in High School. I currently work as a professional programmer, and have no formal education. Also every college has some BS requirements to get a degree, how does a foreign language relate to programming?
College is more about making money, not learning...
Suppose you were to graduate from such a high school.
Who would hire you, and assuming you were able to get an entry-level position, what would your career prospects be?
Assuming you had your sights set on higher education, what would your chances of getting into a decent college be like?
I'd be pessimistic.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
One word: Hogwarts.
On a serious note, the City has numerous other specialized high schools; it's great that they're finally creating one for coders. My wife attended the School for the Performing Arts, which was also highly focused, and full of music / acting geeks.
People seem to be arguing towards their own internalized assumptions and recollections about what trade schools used to be. (And if not that, then they're arguing over what they dislike about most state and national education priorities, and making this announcement into a target for all their education-related agita.) The fact of the matter is, there are no real trade schools. When they talk about college prep, they're ultimately talking about AP courses and college writing. I've been to a number of high schools in the city, in the 80s, 90s and today, and what vestiges of 'trade school instruction' were still lying around by 1990 are at worst on the periphery. This would be an environment like any new high school, except they'll offer a dozen elective (and maybe 3 or so selective) courses pertaining to software and computer design. It's not an Apex Tech. There may be ancient metal and wood shop classes still around, but whether the've been replaced with C++ and ergonomic design, it hardly adds up to a true traditional trade school.
I went to Clark Advanced Learning Center (a made for dual enrollment technology high school) back in 2004. We were all provided laptops by the school and we could choose to get an AA or AS degree when we graduated. I had the option to become CNA certified, Adobe certified, among many other certifications offered. We always had access to the latest software for learning and in addition we had a HD production studio complete with a handful of beast desktops for video editing. I would say that aside from us being guinea pigs so far as giving an entire high school laptops, that it was a positive experience for me. The downsides were related to students who didn't care to learn wasting their time playing games (at any given moment there were 40-80 students playing counter-strike over LAN). There were also some failures of the administration and the teachers themselves in becoming certified which means your credits become "credits" for college and are thereby demoted to "electives" despite them being recognized courses at the time.
I would think that preschool- 2nd grade should be focused on learning how to learn then 3rd-7th should be getting the basics down 8th and 9th we deal with the non-core stuff and then 10th-12th we start with this kind of Focused Learning.
(btw i would have Businesses and the Military do some "shopping" late in the 9th grade to get kids going to Jobs that they can be great at)
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Looks like an ideal customer for: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/01/17/0014220/raspberry-pi-25-linux-computer-now-in-production-video
Crooms Academy of Information Technology is a high school in the Seminole County Florida school district that has been around for a while. Students are usually selected by lottery due to more applications than slots available.
The school helps kids get internships with local companies, including Electronic Arts.
Not enough cheap labor, talent nor pool of ready recruits to shore up the ranks of professional programmers needed in NYC the Bd of Ed offers its support. They'll follow Columbia University as a MS certificate factory for WallSt. Trickle down inevitably reaches its lowest-common denominator...minds of mush and loads of opportunity after graduation. At least students at University are old enough to be responsible for their choices.
MS HighTech High School in San Diego is a non-starter scoring lower than expected for its focused learning, ready-to-work skills and career path curriculum. Don't expect educational excellence parents
I'm curious nobody mentioned STEM schools... we have those in my district, I won't let my kids go, other than future employment opportunities not existing, there seems to be nothing terribly wrong with them.
This school sounds an awful lot like a STEM school without the "S" and "E". A "TM" school. Does this sound about correct? I wonder if they already have STEM schools in NYC?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I spent most of my formative years in a good, well-funded public school district. When I was in elementary school, computer class meant there was an Apple IIe available for each kid to use (and a futuristic-looking Apple IIgs in the corner that we could look at but never touch). We mostly played games that involved directing Algernon through a maze to a piece of cheese or fitting pieces of machinery together to solve a problem. I joined the math club because it met an hour before school in the computer room, and I'd intentionally write down wrong answers to the five math problems so I could spend most of that hour playing with the computers.
In seventh grade, computer class meant there was a Mac LC II for every kid to use. We'd spend the class time doing word processing or desktop publishing. The teacher allowed students free use of the computers for an hour or two after school every day, and I took advantage of it. I discovered Beyond Zork, played way too many games of Michael Casteel's Klondike (when I moved to Silicon Valley years later I had to make a pilgrimage to the Sunnyvale address where it was developed) and played with literally every element of the software to figure out what I could make it do.
In eighth grade I spent a year in a good but very-poorly-funded school district where computer class meant there were five Apple IIs to be shared among 25 students. We were assigned the task of creating a word processing document, typing one paragraph of text, and saving it to a 5.25" floppy. We would take turns doing this while the other four people watched and the teacher went around reviewing our progress, coaching students through mistakes. I zipped through mine quickly and taught the others in my group how to do it and then we'd sit there for the last 30 min of class. While I sat there with my head on the table, bored out of my mind, I noticed a book on BASIC on the shelf below the windows. I asked the teacher if I could read it, and started writing my own BASIC programs. Seeing my progress and interest, he told me I could borrow it until I had finished it, and I did. I'd read it as I walked to and from school in the snow, and I'd lay on my bed writing programs on loose leaf. In class I'd hurry the other students in my group through their exercises so I could enter my programs and try them out.
I returned to my old school the next year, but I had a greater appreciation for access to computers and spent my time on them writing code instead of playing games. I never had a computer at home until my senior year of high school because my father insisted he would only buy a Windows box because "Macs aren't real computers."
Do I imagine everyone learns to program this way? No. But I do believe programming is not something that lends itself to being taught in a classroom as a standard lesson. There should be classes that expose students to just enough to draw the attention of those who are so inclined, and then provide avenues for those who are interested to continue to explore and grow. But programmers need to be driven, inquisitive, problem solving, and somewhat solitary. Being spoon-fed lessons in a classroom doesn't create effective programmers because in reality no one is going to spoon feed you solutions to problems -- you're paid to come up with solutions. If your employer or customers wanted solutions someone else has already come up with, they'd buy a box off the shelf for less money.
That said, I'm open to the possibility that I could be wrong and this could be a great way to train a superstar class of programmers. To those who think this is a great idea, what sort of curriculum would you suggest for it? What classes would you prescribe to give freshmen a solid base, sophomores and juniors something to build upon that base, and seniors something advanced to challenge and refine them?
I wouldn't quite say that, but I do doubt that pregnancy will be a problem.
All the more reason to pair up with that private girls school across the lake!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
In asia school is all about the TEST and how to pass the test.
A lot of asian's cheat in college any ways.
I don't know if we need a specific school to teach software, but we at least need a class to teach software. When I went to high school 25 years ago, they taught Basic on old TRS-80 Model 100s. Now that computers are so prolific, they very same school that I went to teaches no programming at all. They have a "computer" class, but it only teaches you the very basics of how to use a computer, and apparently that consists of how to play flash games and download illegal music and games and burn them to CD. The kids come out not even knowing what software they would use to write a report.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
That is WHY IT NEEDS trade schools. CS is not IT not college is for making teachers.
I'd find it hard to take someone seriously who went to a high school that focused solely on software. Many people can manage to write code without it taking up their whole childhood. Who needs a high school focused just on that?
Wow, as a gainfully employed embedded software engineer, I've got to call bullshit.
I mean, I moved towns in '09 and had to find new work. That was pretty much at the bottom of the market. It took me a couple months, and had to do some SQL work, but I jumped up to a better job a few short years and life is good.
There are computers everywhere dude, and they all need to be told what to do. Usually over and over again. That's a lot of work.
I get what you're saying about overseas competition, and it's a worry. But it's not so bad that I'm out of work or working for scraps, so I really don't see the problem.
Then again, maybe it's just that I'm in a tech-savy hotspot where life is wonderful for software engineers. You know, Iowa.
Would you want to go (or have gone) to such a school? Would you want your kids to attend?
Yes, and maybe. I would want my kids to focus on what they have a natural propensity for, not necessarily to follow in my footsteps.
When I went to high school the programming class and the advanced programming class were both based on Borland Pascal, and taught by the piano teacher who dabbled in programming computer-generated music as a hobby. Each class I challenged the course at the beginning of the semester and found that I was able to pass the course requirements without dragging out the rest of the year. This freed me up to be able to research whatever I wanted and also help my class mates. When I discovered that I was able to pre-compile inline assembly code into my Pascal programs and gain very low level control over the system (I started experimenting with SVGA hardware control, and fast triangle rendering for 3D graphics - nothing amazing by today's standards, but this was in the the early 90's). When I began to ask the instructor about the significance of various assembly language instructions and he cluelessly speculated that they might be some form of C, I realized that I have just exhausted his usefulness. Sadly I had no Internet, BBS'es were largely beyond my reach, and the most impactful thing I discovered was the Simtel CDROM which came packed with sample source code - thank God for 90's Shareware.
I would have very much enjoyed having more knowledgeable resources and guidance at my disposal. As it was I was resource limited to what I could reverse engineer on my own, or save up my allowance to purchase that absolute most important books I could find at the local book store. This was back at a time when computers were still relatively simple. Windows 3.0 was a novelty. DOS Extenders and protected mode programming was just emerging. Hackers like me could build their own 16 bit ISA bus boards and expand the physical capabilities of their own computers. And information flow was at a trickle.
I believe today's blooming Computer Science majors face new hurdles and have even greater need of wisdom in the field. You can't just hack the PC bus from a simple pin-out diagram. There are now 25 layers of abstraction designed specifically to keep you from understanding what goes on in the hardware layer. Some software developers don't even know what a hard drive looks like. A school with an emphasis on computing systems would be ideal for hungry minds, although, I imagine, the same could be said of any profession.
a) This is done right. They accept people and teach them how to *think*.
b) This is done offshore-style. The accept people, ultimately teach basic control flow; then teach them how to copy, paste, and modify (if it can't be avoided) existing code rather than truly understand what needs to be done and why.
I'll leave it to you to decide which is most likely to occur.
You need more "hard working undocumented immigrants" that will do the job for less. Take some of ours, from California, we have plenty!
Of course, if your plumber makes $240K by running a crew of said labor, then, never mind.
A lot of asian's cheat in college any ways.
I see you are speaking from personal experience, and that you cheated your way through rudimentary English grammer.
I transferred to a special magnet school in NY to take computer science back in 1968. We worked on teletypes with acoustic modems and punched paper tape attached to a PDP-something-or-other. We mostly used Fortran 44 but had a class in Cobol as well (hated it even back then). We were taught modular programming style and projects included games and mathematics. It was only the second school in the US that offered that program at the time. I feel very lucky to have had that opportunity.
ahhh sooo.
enchent chineese secret.
we arways maken mistake so be misunderestimate.
ahr hiro isen George W.
Who is going to be there to beat them up, you know, give them wedgies and swirleys?
Companies like IBM are moving their software engineering jobs to Asian countries, and the trend is only growing. Unless you want your kids to relocate, better to have them find another career !
I guess calling for unrestricted H1B visas wasn't enough? Now Bloomberg figures he can use the taxpayers' money to school up software engineers (without a college degree = even cheaper labor) for his IT operation, along with the financial companies that won't pay Americans enough to go work in NYC, without having to change immigration law. It's actually quite the good (but evil) scheme on his part.
Some people will never learn calculus because they suck at math. But they have other options. They can still complete high school and go on to lead a productive and fulfilling life.
Likewise, some people have a hard time dealing with "non-geeks," and some people don`t give a shit about Shakespeare. Maybe it would be better if they did, but they don`t.
Don`t take away their options just because you think everyone should fit some "well-rounded" ideal.
In 2006 I attended a school like that Senior year in high school, but it was not as focused. They provided laptops for all the students to use and take home. This school did have some "software engineering" classes, automotive, "pre-law", and such. I took a basic electronics class went over simple circuits (ended up building simple circuits from a breadboard, resistors, and other basic parts), and an A+ certification prep class.
Honestly, you shouldn't get your hopes up for a school like this. From my personal experience, things sound better in theory than practice. The electronics class spent a whole year teaching the electronics portion of our regular year long physics class (whose electronics portion cover maybe a month max). I took that physics class the year before. The A+ class might have been good for people who had no idea/experience using computers, but then those people were probably not the ones who ended up taking the test and using the knowledge. The rest of us could have learned it from a book during the summer. What we did instead was dick around. Most people played games, listened to music, IM'd other people in other classes, went on Facebook and MySpace (back when some people still used it). Some of us tried to bypass the security installed in the laptops (since this was a brand new school, the security wasn't up to snuff yet).
You have to realize that in the US education system, every student must be "accommodated". That means that most of the classes were dumbed down, and you're pretty much in a regular high school again (minus the laptops). My school had an open admission too, so the dumbest of the dumb as well as some pretty smart people attended.
Don't be fooled by the targeted emphasis that the school is supposed to adhere to. If some of the students can't or can barely make it through their regular high school, that means the must be "accommodated" in this new one (since it has open admission). The school administrators and teachers can't play hardball and expect the students to toughen up and actually try to learn and study. Remember, funding for these schools depend on their pass/fail ratio. The shiny new school comes with a shiny and massive bill.
I took computer programming and network support while I was in high school. It's called a vocational school and they've been around for a long time. I don't understand how they think this is going to be any different because they specify it as a tech school. Despite the fact that vocational schools offer good courses to kids who are interested the majority of kids are there because you can burn a joint on the drive from your home school to your vocational school and no one cares what you do so you can get away with pretty much anything you want.
Thinking back to when I was in high school I knew I wanted to do something in the IT field, but I was largely undecided on what I wanted to do. Thankfully, I went to a vocational school during last two years in high school to help me make up my mind and then I went to college and got a couple degrees in computer science and network administration.
That being said, even though deciding to go to a vocational school was one of the best decisions of my life as I got to learn a bit about both high and low level programming, digital circuitry, pc repair, and networking before I decided where I wanted to go, I did miss out on a few things from normal high school life. I spent half the day in the vocational school and half at high school and was an automatic social outcast because of it. I got so detached from high school that I didn't even go to my senior prom and dropped out of the track team because it didn't feel right anymore.
In my opinion, it's about time that we finally have something that lets young students pursue something like this AND still have the high school life that every kid should have. For those that are unfamiliar with New York State, all high school students still need to pass state regents exams for math, science, etc, so as since this isn't a vocational school they won't be able to skip out on those things.
If they don't go in to software development after school it doesn't mean that they aren't learning anything useful. It's not unheard of for scientists to know a little bit about programming when doing research, or a graphics arts person might go ahead and build themselves a unique web site to showcase their work to prospective clients.
The only major issue I see, is loosing touch with the "other world" outside of computers and high school. It won't be hard to forget about how things work on the outside and how to relate to the average person (even regular public high schools forget about this when all you hear is "get ready for college" over and over again). Many high school students are already in for a big shock when they get out of high school and adding more to that with expecting to get hired right away or into the the college of their choosing right away just because they know something about programming isn't going to help anything.