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Code.org Documentary Serving Multiple Agendas?
theodp writes "'Someday, and that day may never come,' Don Corleone says famously in The Godfather, 'I'll call upon you to do a service for me.' Back in 2010, filmmaker Lesley Chilcott produced Waiting for 'Superman', a controversial documentary that analyzed the failures of the American public education system, and presented charter schools as a glimmer of hope, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-backed KIPP Los Angeles Prep. Gates himself was a 'Superman' cast member, lamenting how U.S. public schools are producing 'American Idiots' of no use to high tech firms like Microsoft, forcing them to 'go half-way around the world to recruit the engineers and programmers they needed.' So some found it strange that when Chilcott teamed up with Gates again three years later to make Code.org's documentary short What Most Schools Don't Teach, kids from KIPP Empower Academy were called upon to demonstrate that U.S. schoolchildren are still clueless about what computer programmers do. In a nice coincidence, the film went viral just as leaders of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook pressed President Obama and Congress on immigration reform, citing a dearth of U.S. programming talent. And speaking of coincidences, the lone teacher in the Code.org film (James, Teacher@Mount View Elementary), whose classroom was tapped by Code.org as a model for the nation's schools, is Seattle teacher Jamie Ewing, who took top honors in Microsoft's Partners in Learning (PiL) U.S. Forum last summer, earning him a spot on PiL's 'Team USA' and the chance to showcase his project at the Microsoft PiL Global Forum in Prague in November (82-page Conference Guide). Ironically, had Ewing stuck to teaching the kids Scratch programming, as he's shown doing in the Code.org documentary, Microsoft wouldn't have seen fit to send him to its blowout at 'absolutely amazingly beautiful' Prague Castle. Innovative teaching, at least according to Microsoft's rules, 'must include the use of one or more Microsoft technologies.' Fortunately, Ewing's project — described in his MSDN guest blog post — called for using PowerPoint and Skype. For the curious, here's Microsoft PiL's vision of what a classroom should be."
i have a kid in a NYC public school. one of the best elementary schools in the city. i also talk to people who have kids in other schools or work in other schools.
the curriculum is the same. the kids are not.
in my school the kindergarten kids at a minimum know the alphabet on the first day of kindergarten. most of the kids in my son's class already know how to read simple books when they come in to kindergarten. by the end of kindergarten all the kids in my son's school are expected to read Scholastic Level F books
i have talked to people and there are first graders in some schools who don't know the alphabet.
if you want smart kids, make them smart. some days my five year old only watches documentaries on netflix and no cartoons.
How could anyone find it surprising that a corporation is promoting use of it's own products. Please. Actually, Microsoft's got a couple of good products that I've used and been happy with. One's Microsoft Lync which we use at work to do messaging, desktop sharing etc. I just wished there was a linux client for the thing. It would make my life much better.
I'm Linux/Unix guy for a living but I do admit Microsoft makes some reasonable products. I wish the corporate lock-in was not as bad as it is and I wish they published docs documenting all their file formats for interoperability. They have made some strides in the last couple of years.
It seems inappropriate to call the person who gave the most money to charity in the history of the world self-serving.
Zuckerberg is just a lucky moron.
Gates was lucky but he's also a really smart guy.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Depends...is your name Robin Hood?
OMG, he made a product that most people liked and bought it
Innovative teaching, at least according to Microsoft's rules, 'must include the use of one or more Microsoft technologies.'
This is no surprise, whether it's a requirement of theirs or not, it sure seems to be standard practice. It causes big problems though, people running the program, like those in charge of the department of computer science at my school, come to push MS products for everything and pigeon hole students into the MS technologies. It's amazing just how many students there are that have used MS all their lives, but are still inept at using even the Windows command line, FSM forbid that you present them with anything else. Innovative teaching of technology in grade school - university should involve a variety of technologies and platforms, especially in secondary education.
--There are two kinds of people in this world. I don't like either of them.
That is not all he did, and it is hard to believe you are unaware.
emt 377 emt 4
Depends...is your name Robin Hood?
No, señor, it's Carlos.
Mexican drug lords are often viewed as heroes because of how they bestow largess on the poor.
Aw come on! So, the OP provided a lot of links and citations. This is supposed to be a good thing. If the underlines on the text are too difficult for you, then change your browser options.
"US schools are awful" is mostly being said by people who have friends investing or running charter schools. Follow the money.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Why would "some find it strange" that Chilcott and Gates, who worked together on Waiting for Superman, would work together again on another documentary, that highlights a more specific variation on the same theme? I don't get it.
Aw come on! So, the OP provided a lot of links and citations.
But at the expense of clarity. I have read it twice, and I still don't understand what he is trying to say. Does a discussion about education really need a link to the dialog of a movie about the mafia? Many of the other links are just as pointless.