Chicago Public Schools Promoting Computer Science to Core Subject

dmiller1984 writes "The Chicago Public Schools, the third-largest public school system in the United States, announced a five-year plan today that would add at least one computer science course to every CPS high school, and elevate computer science to a core requirement instead of an elective. CPS announced this through a partnership with code.org, stating that the non-profit would provide free curriculum, professional development, and stipends for teachers."

Comments

Keyboarding

[Bing Tsher E]

Every pupil will be required to take the Keyboarding course.

The computer labs will fill with students who hate being there.

Re: Keyboarding

[Vanderhoth]

Typing classes were some of my favorites. Sure there was a lot of repetition, but we did get to play some game. And there was no boring memorization/regurgitation/essay BS like history, English, or a ton of other subjectivity marked courses where the profs favorites got the best marks.

Re:Keyboarding

[timeOday]

Typing is maybe #1 among the courses in highschool that I remember and that has had a concrete benefit to me. That said, each of my kids has been taught keyboard in 3rd or 4th grade so it's not highschool material any more.

Re: Keyboarding

[blackraven14250]

Mario Teaches Typing was the keyboarding portion of the generalized computer classes I had in middle school. Never was there more interest in a subject than that.

Re: Keyboarding

[cervesaebraciator]

I don't normally do this, but in this case I can't resist:

And there was no boring memorization/regurgitation/essay BS like history, English, or a ton of other subjectively marked courses where the prof's favorites got the best marks.

That's minus two points. I could mark off a few more for poor style, but you seem like a nice kid so I'll let it slide.

Re:Keyboarding

[Xicor]

i enjoyed my CS class. now im a CS major. our professor in highschool had an epic way of grading project assignments... there were 4 grade levels up to 100 based on how far you got... and if you went above that, he would assign grades above 100. there was a kid in my class who got a 1000 out of 100 on an assignment... got an automatic A for the class. ( i only got a 200/100 on that project)

Re: Keyboarding

[dcollins]

My current employer told me, years after the fact, that I got an interview specifically because my cover letter seemed so literate. Quality writing is the level-zero evaluation (quick and accessible) for anyone's level of education and attention to detail.

More specifically, the idea of programming a computer and being simultaneously sloppy on syntax is pretty mind-boggling -- and from experience the code turned out by people like that, not caring about how they communicate with other people (if it compiles, it's committed), is pretty hellish.

Re:Keyboarding

[tepples]

Who doesn't already know how to type these days? Every kid has a smartphone with texting.

Even children of the working poor?

What's left to teach in Keyboarding? How to type with fingers instead of thumbs?

Yes. Where the number keys and the punctuation keys are on big boy keyboards. How to exceed 60 wpm by touch typing. How to WASD around a model of the school building shooting paintballs at your intramural opponents.

Re: Keyboarding

[MightyYar]

It's all context.

A resume or cover letter has to be absolutely perfect. Two things bother me about mistakes on those: First, at least take the time to have a friend check your resume. How long would that take? If you don't care enough to do that, then why am I even reading this thing? Second, you have to be aware that there are grammar and spelling Nazis out there - some of them in HR and some in your chosen field. How can you possibly be good at critical thinking if you don't realize this and try to take this minimal step to assuage them? This is the first impression you will have on a potential employer!

On the other hand, some minor grammar or spelling (but really, spell check?) errors in internal documentation are no big deal, and certainly not worth kicking back a code or documentation review. Those only should happen when it changes the meaning or affects understanding somehow.

Re: Keyboarding

[cervesaebraciator]

It's all context.

Agreed. So, for example, Slashdot posts are really not that important in the grand scheme of things. I try to communicate clearly, but I'm sure a review would show that I do not proofread as I would for a published texts. Though the posts are recorded, the discussion is almost as ephemeral as real conversation and should be approached accordingly. But suppose you're going to write a Slashdot post where you dismiss the value of English courses (or at least a key exercise used to demonstrate you've learned something in an English course). In that context, the irony of obvious solecisms would be a bit too much.

Re: Keyboarding

[cervesaebraciator]

I try to communicate clearly, but I'm sure a review would show that I do not proofread as I would for a published text.

FTFM. What an illiterate ass. Doesn't even bother to proofread.

Re: Keyboarding

[cheekyjohnson]

How can you possibly be good at critical thinking if you don't realize this and try to take this minimal step to assuage them?

Perhaps they don't want to be sheep. Perhaps this is their way of eliminating worthless, incompetent, and superficial employers.

Re:Keyboarding

[Cinder6]

There's a big difference between typing on a keyboard and typing on a phone.

Re: Keyboarding

[Vanderhoth]

Exactly. The reason I let those co-op students, on two separate co-ops on two separate occasions, go was because they walked into a board meeting with the clients and instead of sitting down and shutting up, as a student should, they proceeded to pick apart the design documents right in front of the people that provided them. You don't sit down in front of someone who has a $40K - $60K contract with you and tell them they're morons for missing a comma or a minor typo. You especially don't let a co-op student do that. Hopefully those students leaned a valuable lesson about proper place, proper time, but I wouldn't have them back working for me just in case that lesson didn't sink in. They can cost someone else a huge contract, but not me.

Another distraction from basic education

[Anonymous Coward]

If we can't get basics like reading figured out, what does it matter?

Try this: duckduckgo/google/bing/etc for "chicago public schools proficient".

Let's get reading figured out before we promote other things to core requirements.

Re:Another distraction from basic education

[dcollins]

For what it's worth, more instruction in reading-as-its-own-thing can be counterproductive. What I've seen for reported research is that time spent on raw reading strategies ("find the main point", etc.) is productive up to about 10 hours and then doesn't give any more benefit. More productive is to get kids reading rich-content material in history and science and everything else, developing larger vocabularies, making more connections between more ideas and concepts. Neuroscientist Daniel Willingham phrases this, "Teaching content is teaching reading." Saying that we need to perfect reading in the abstract before broadening knowledge of the world is a waste of time and counterproductive -- like spinning tires in mud or dropping kids mentally into a sensory-deprivation tank.

http://www.danielwillingham.com/1/post/2012/03/school-time-knowledge-and-reading-comprehension.html

Critical thinking

[enigma32]

Yeah, this is great and all...

But wouldn't it be more useful to have a course that emphasizes critical thinking about all types of problems rather than focusing on one specific application of critical thinking? People usually seem to overlook that the important thing about working with computers is the ability to think critically about what you're doing, not the specifics of what you're doing.

Traditional science classes kind of broach the surface of critical thinking, but I suspect that it could be covered in much greater depth over a wide variety of problems, to much better effect.

Re:Critical thinking

[jader3rd]

But wouldn't it be more useful to have a course that emphasizes critical thinking about all types of problems rather than focusing on one specific application of critical thinking?

Yes, but sometimes getting your hands dirty helps too.

I remember my first CS class in University. The professors were using a new text book that tried to teach programming without doing much programming. It was very difficult, and they dropped the book for the next semester. A year later I remembered that reading that book always put me to sleep, and I was having trouble sleeping so I picked the book up, and to my surprise it was awesome! I even thought about how it did a great job teaching programming without really being language specific. But I could only see that in hindsight, after having had a couple of months of actually programming and poking around.

Re:Critical thinking

[scamper_22]

I taught high school computer science for a while and I an a software developer.

I think almost anyone will agree that teaching how to think, understand and create algorithms, and critical thinking is the goal of computer science.

However, how do you express those thoughts? You could do it through the use of abstract mathematical symbols or perhaps pseudo-code.

Or you can express thoughts same thoughts via a programming language.

Better still, using a programming language lets you see the actual results of what you programmed, debug, find problems, view variable contents...

People who criticize the teaching of computer science always seem to hate on the choice of programming language. Look, I agree sometimes schools pick a practical or industry used programming language.

But this is not a problem. The problem resides in what you do with that language. If all you teach kids about programming is calling into libraries, then yeah, it is a problem. But if you teach them logic and control and variables, which most programming languages provide, then you're doing fine.

Even languages like Java which hide memory allocation are not that bad. This is high school computer science. If you can get them to understand variables and a for-loop, you're a miracle worker :)

They can learn the details of memory management in college/university or another advanced high-school class.

Re:Critical thinking

[ShanghaiBill]

"Critical thinking" is this mantra that has come to signify almost nothing.

If you ask someone advocating "critical thinking" what it actually means, you mostly get mumbling. If you ask people to give an example of what a "critical thinking" classroom lesson would entail, none of them will agree with the others. I heard one advocate insist that "critical thinking" meant teaching the scientific method, although the archetype of "critical thinking" is the Socratic method, which is pretty much the exact opposite of the scientific method.

Make it core for Trig students

[Spy Handler]

Forcing CS down on everyone's throat would be like forcing calculus. Some can take it and some can't.

I'd guess that about half the population (IQ below 100) will never get programming no matter how hard you try to teach them.

But if a kid can pass algebra and geometry, they can probably learn some BASIC.

The ones that can't hack algebra, teach them Excel or data entry so the school board can be proud of leading the high tech education future or something along those lines.

Re:Make it core for Trig students

[cheekyjohnson]

I'd guess that about half the population (IQ below 100) will never get programming no matter how hard you try to teach them.

That depends on what you mean by "get programming." If you're merely talking about making any sort of program and the quality of the code doesn't matter at all, then I disagree. If you're talking about being competent, then I think far less than half could "get programming." IQ also has nothing to do with it.

PC-free households

[tepples]

If computer science is a requirement, then how will students in households without a general-purpose computer complete their homework assignments? A lot of households rely on iPhones, iPads, and/or game consoles, which don't offer much in the way of end-user programmability.

Re:PC-free households

[dmiller1984]

I teach CS and my students never have homework. One of the benefits of a CS class is the flipped model that allows most, if not all, of the work to be completed in class.

Re:PC-free households

[Microlith]

It's worse than that. When I was a kid I was interested in programming before I ever had access to computers at school that could support it. I did Visual Basic and Delphi at home on the family PC, and also on the 386 it replaced that I had commandeered. It was at least 3 years before I was in a position to buy my own.

I feel sorry for the coming generation of kids who will know nothing but locked down, hostile devices that will have to convince their parents that they need a real computer, particularly if their parents are computer averse.

Logic, not computers

[mtrachtenberg]

Computer science is a poor substitute for teaching logical argument and mathematical logic. But if they're going to teach computer science, I hope that doesn't mean "how to use Excel."

Re:Logic, not computers

[VortexCortex]

The HS class for using Excell and Word is called, "Vocational Computer Applications" where I come from. In the 1990's Computer Math was the class you took for BASIC, Pascal, C, etc. Nowadays I think the curriculum is JavaScript, Python, C. In 100 years it'll probably be Neuron.Net, BizLang, and C.

I've invented other languages with the aim to be as close to the metal as possible on modern Von Neumann architectures -- It was basically C that looked different; C is a product of its environment. Only difference was that mine has an optional GC and co-routines (heap functions instead of stack functions). Interesting things computer languages, the Turing complete ones are all equivalent. However, the fundamental operations on fundamental concepts such as data field sets and arrays, lists, etc. are usually all there and the minimal abstraction for them will work something like C, because that's what it is.

Now, how would you go about teaching mathematical logic and problem solving to students? What tools would you use? Would you have them go on field trips to buildings being built and teach them engineering and construction 1st hand? Would you buy each kid an erector set and have them work out how to bridge gaps; Maybe you would have them simple solve logic puzzles using word games. Maybe you've realized that you're just presenting them a set of abstract problems and tasks that need to be solved and accomplished given a set of specific tools. Would you go out and buy all the different toolsets and construct the various problem spaces -- Or, and I mean be as condescending as possible, would you just have them do all theses things every day in a single class using computers, its simulations, and a programming language? Funny thing those logic and mathematic skills -- They're Turing complete; However, the minimal logical abstractions for them to work within is something like a computer, because that's what it is.

Keep in mind that the equivalent of tons of books can be carried as a digital knowledge reference instead of turned back in at the end of the year... Consider that if students can't call up every lesson they've ever been taught on their portable pocket computers, you've been do education wrong. Oh, they should learn with paper and pen? Why? Rocks and sand work just as well. There's a reason we use blackboards, paper, pencil, calculator, computer, laboratory, etc. instead of just the student's mind. Of course if you teach them how to code, they'll be able to port their lessons to every new system they code on.

After-school bus problem

[tepples]

Probably use a computer at school

With the sorry state of student transit in some cities, it might be hard for a student who stays after school to complete his assignments to get home from school. Is Chicago any better?

or a library.

Provided that the other students haven't already reserved all the PCs at the library.

The Typing of the Dead

[tepples]

Nowadays would something like The Typing of the Dead be more popular?

Re:The Typing of the Dead

[blackraven14250]

Depends on the student (just look at the player demographics of Mario games vs. violent zombie games), although I don't think that would fly in almost any school nowadays. Mario is a much less openly violent game. It's overall structure is better at educating students from a zero-experience start, as well. For example, in MTT, they show you exact fingers for any given key. You can get through most of the first level with hunt and peck, which means less frustration for students, and a better likelihood of them wanting to play more instead of give up. Meanwhile in TotD, you're lucky to make it through the first level at all as a typical kid typist IIRC (it's been a long time, but I played TotD a few years after MTT, and couldn't get to the annoying imp+golem boss - I just beat him on Dreamcast with a lightgun instead). I actually think MTT is one of the best educational games ever created - it's thoroughly teaching the skills, but makes it feel so much like a real game, and starts from a realistic skill level to allow anyone to pick it up.

Taught by whom?

[EMG at MU]

CPS has a big budget problem, just like the rest of Illinois. CPS also has a very poor relationship with the public teachers union, the teachers went on strike last year and shut the district down.

Where exactly is CPS going to find people who are passionate and knowledgeable about CS who also want to teach in a public district in Illinois? Stipends and training are nice but I don't feel like forcing students to take a CS course, taught by a teacher who may have no real experience in CS, is going to encourage anyone already not determined to go to university for CS to change their mind. It may actually dissuade potential CS majors.

Re:Taught by whom?

[GlobalEcho]

CPS pays an average of just under $75K to teachers, which is more than most private schools do. Along with the extra job security and (promised if not delivered) pensions, that makes the teaching positions attractive to quite a few people. The teachers I know also feel good about dedicating their professional lives to students in CPS, who are generally in need of every bit of help they can get.

If I had made a bundle in the dot com bubble or something, I could see myself teaching CS in CPS. Or at least trying -- I teach grad school and don't know if I have the personality for younger students.

Teaching critical thinking early is a bad idea

[tlambert]

But wouldn't it be more useful to have a course that emphasizes critical thinking about all types of problems rather than focusing on one specific application of critical thinking?

Teaching critical thinking early is a bad idea.

There is a place and time for shoveling as much information into a child's head as it can possibly hold without exploding. This is when we teach multiplication tables, drill grammar into their thick skulls, teach them basic math up through algebra, spelling, penmanship, history, and so on.

As soon as you teach critical thinking skills, it's like setting the write protect bit: it enables them to make a value judgement on the validity of the information they are being given by the teachers (and other adults), and as soon as you have that, you begin to build distrust of information sources - even ones with good information to impart.

Generally some critical thinking skills form on their own; creative writing, physics, chemistry, debate, and other classes tend to foster their development, regardless of whether or not you are done shoveling the basic stuff into their heads. As soon as that bit is set, you might as well give up trying to program them, you've lost: they're teenagers.

Logic classes belong in the first quarter/semester of your first year of college, and not before.

Re:Teaching critical thinking early is a bad idea

[cheekyjohnson]

Exactly. Why would we ever want to 'teach' people to have critical thinking skills? Schooling is all about indoctrination and rote memorization, and actual thoughts would just get in the way of that.

Re:Teaching critical thinking early is a bad idea

[femtobyte]

Woah, kids don't become teenagers because you've taught them critical thinking. You're seriously confusing correlation and causation here. Kids hit the "teenager" stage of mental development whether you want it or not, as a natural part of the progression in brain development. The right time to teach critical thinking is whenever kids are ready for it (which will vary from child to child, sometimes by quite a lot).

For young children still in the "sponge up, memorize, and repeat information from the environment with no higher analysis" developmental phase, a repetitive, memorization of random facts and methods approach is appropriate. However, introducing the "higher thinking" approach as soon as kids are able to handle it is highly beneficial --- when you can understand and synthesize material, in addition to just remembering something you've seen before, you'll do far better at every subject. Stunting critical skills by beating rote conformity into teenagers (who have hit brain development stages incompatible with this) may produce quiet, well-behaved, and dull idiots, but that shouldn't be the goal of education. Rather, guiding the inevitable development of critical thinking through the wacky teenage years to take advantage of good information along with rebelling against bad is how to go about education.

Re:Teaching critical thinking early is a bad idea

[tlambert]

Exactly. Why would we ever want to 'teach' people to have critical thinking skills? Schooling is all about indoctrination and rote memorization, and actual thoughts would just get in the way of that.

I think you missed the part where I said that some critical thinking skills are formed on their own; and people should definitely have critical thinking skills; I've been persuaded by another poster that it should be a mandatory grade 12 (High School Senior) course, rather than waiting for the first year of college.

It's counter productive to impair the ability to teach children rote information by teaching them to doubt the source before attempting to teach them the rote information. For non-rote information classes, that's the likely places that self-derived critical thinking skills will develop on their own.

Also see my other post about certain religious sects - I give the example of Amish/Mennonite communities) where doubting your teacher in school becomes the same as doubting your parents and doubting your religious authority. Instilling a high probability of acting on such doubts, which is an opportunity given at 14-16 years of age in those communities, is effectively cultural genocide.

While you may be saying "Good! I'm a rational humanist, and they should be too! I want everyone to be like me!", those cultures embody skill sets that we, as a society, may decide we need some day, in the same way that some - myself included - have argued that kids should be taught to do math without calculators because one EMP, and they won't be able to add anything on their own past "ten fingers" any more.

Re:Teaching critical thinking early is a bad idea

[cheekyjohnson]

You're teaching them to use their brains.

But then again, that's something you can only facilitate for the elite few who actually have worthwhile brains.

Re:Teaching critical thinking early is a bad idea

[femtobyte]

Regardless of the specific suddenness, there's still the underlying notion of whether teenage brain development (towards a "questioning authority" independent critical thinking approach) is something taught, or something innate in brain development. The specific form that "teenage rebellion" takes is certainly a cultural artifact (i.e. is taught) --- teenagers will adopt a particular language, style of dress, musical taste, and mode of behavior by mimicking influences around them (ironically, often "rebelling" by slavish conformity to mass-produced corporate propaganda). However, human brain development, producing the raw faculties and innate yearning for more critical and conceptual approaches than "memorize and regurgitate," is going to happen whether you try teaching it or not. Delaying education addressed to such mental development until the first year of college will do nothing but create needlessly stunted minds, squandering the opportunity for beneficial enrichment of critical thinking faculties.

Just as there is a window of opportunity where young children can seemingly effortlessly learn multiple languages just from hearing them spoken, the teenage years of critical thinking development won't be postponed by forcing curriculum changes --- it's going to happen anyway, so you might as well take educational advantage of it (rather than leaving age-targeted TV advertisements to be the primary influence designed to engage teens' attention).

Re:Teaching critical thinking early is a bad idea

[tlambert]

You're not teaching them to doubt a source. You're teaching them to use their brains. If you're teaching by rote, chances are (though not always), you're not teaching much of anything. Multiplication tables are garbage, for instance; math is not about being able to calculate random garbage in your head quickly, but even if it were, people will naturally memorize things they see often.

"Critical thinking is a way of deciding whether a claim is true, partially true, or false. Critical thinking is a process that leads to skills that can be learned, mastered and used. Critical thinking is a tool by which one can come about reasoned conclusions based on a reasoned process. This process incorporates passion and creativity, but guides it with discipline, practicality and common sense."

The problem with "teaching critical thinking", then, is that you teach them to decide validity for themselves, but you do NOT teach them to always come to the correct conclusion when the process is complete. If it were about coming to "correct conclusions", rather than "conclusions which appear on the surface to be correct based on the available information", everyone who applied the critical thinking process would always arrive at exactly the same conclusions.

Therefore, you want to maximize "the available information", and turning on the write protect bit on someone's mind before they understand, for example, that "being able to calculate random garbage in your head quickly" is *very* important to knowing whether you have enough money in your pocket to buy the things you have in your shopping basket when you get to the checkout, or whether you're going to look like an ass while you make everyone behind you in line wait while you decide which things to put back to fit your available cash.

is effectively cultural genocide.

Education is not about skill sets, or keeping certain cultures that rely on obedience alive.

I think you really need to look up the term "Cultural Relativism"; not everyone wants to live in an apartment with cable TV, within walking distance of a Walmart, a McDonald's, and a Pizza Hut. Other cultures value other things, and they keep their cultural integrity, often by operating on a different axiomatic basis that has to necessarily exclude some information, but which does not preclude critical thinking within their (different, not necessarily limited) scope.

There are cultures which achieve what they believe to be very fulfilling lives in that way, and tend to have vastly lower suicide rates than our supposedly "superior" culture has; your statement is tantamount to another term you should look up: "Cultural Imperialism".

Re:Teaching critical thinking early is a bad idea

[tlambert]

I'm not sure this is "stealing" them from their culture. It's equipping them with the ability to make a more rational choice, and I don't think you can really argue against this, regardless of any consideration for the overall effect integrated over population statistics.

I can: it equips them to make a rational choice based on *the information available to them at the time of the choice*. Such a choice based on a lack of critical pieces of information necessary to their understanding of the consequences of the decision is only *situationally rational*, and perhaps not long term rational or correct.

Oh the humanity

[EmperorOfCanada]

I can just see the courses my school would have offered. Textbooks full of code that is bug ridden. Teachers that would not understand advanced programming and thus penalize awesome programmers that "colored outside the lines" and used advanced programming. I could see some student using a singleton instead of a global and having the teacher say "Wrong a global would have been cleaner." Even if you hate singletons, global are worse.

Then I could see the technology becoming either a buzzword bingo or really dated. So it would be intro to perl, visual basic, and power builder. Or an intro to node.js, ruby, and haskell.

But the second worst upon worst would be that companies would "freely" donate to the school system so that the kids would become little MSDN/Oracle/Salesforce drones.

The worst of worst would be that they would suck all the fun out of it; Every single drop. So instead of teaching them something relevant such as making a video game, an Arduino robot, or creating a tool for interacting with pintrest/twiter/vine etc. They would have them doing the age old command line enter your age and find out how old you are in dog years crap.

I have watched my nephews making crap in Unity3D and they are forcing themselves to learn programming. Much is copy and paste code then hammer it until it works. This is not going to create a firm foundation but if after this they took a rapid introduction to programming course that showed them how to do things correctly they would realize that many of their bad habits had a cure. But they wouldn't have to learn the underlying philosophy that makes you really grok programming which is something that most intro courses completely fail at. I have talked to many people who have just passed a university programming course and they usually don't know the difference between a float and an int. (Usually Java based courses so they should know).

I'm not saying that CS in highschool is a bad idea but that CS is for a certain type of person. You either love it or it is purely a chore. It seems that the goal is to expose tonnes of people to CS and hope that a few end up joining our little cult. So my suggestion is to create for credit computer/engineering clubs. The idea would be to have the tools and a mentor who would encourage independent study and small group projects. This way someone who has been doing Arduino assembly since grade 8 would be able to attempt something fantastic while someone else who had failed to compile Hello World and still loved it would also have a place that welcomed them. Trying to have a standard curriculum is just going to annoy everybody and only result in wasted time and tears; and maybe even a worse outcome as the person who wants to make an app is just going to get pissed off writing the usual command line garbage. Personally I would much rather make a crappy buggy app than a perfect command line thing on my first go.

The brain-death is strong.

[jcr]

Speaking as one who had the misfortune of having to try to help kids with no interest at all in computing, back when I was in high school myself, this is a fucking idiotic idea. Coding isn't for everyone.

-jcr