Chelsea Clinton At NCWIT: More PE, Less Zuckerberg
theodp (442580) writes "Among the speakers at last week's National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) Summit was Chelsea Clinton, who spoke fondly of the Commodore she received as a kid on Christmas Day in 1987. During the Q&A, Clinton was asked (Vimeo), 'What do you see as some of the right policies that could help put Computer Science — which is undeniably the most important 21st Century skill — into our classrooms?' To which the former First Daughter responded, 'I won't quibble with the fact that I think it's very important. I also think other things admittedly are important.' Such as? Aligning Computer Science with Common Core, for one thing ('Ensure that Computer Science is part of the definition of science'). Using state budget surpluses to hire additional physical education teachers for elementary and middle school students, for another ('For Computer Science, as any subject, kids that are well-fed with healthy food and who have been activated in their bodies will able to learn and retain information in any subject better than if they're not'). And, last but not least, 'continuing to tell stories of people that are not...people who don't look like Mark Zuckerberg as successful in Computer Science and technology.' NCWIT, by the way, was listed as a "major partner" on last December's Hour of Code, which arguably made Mark Zuckerberg the face of Computer Science for K-12 students in the nationwide campaign embraced by President Obama during CSEdWeek."
I respect Chelsea Clinton a lot, among other accomplishments she was an excellent model of self control, poise and intelligence when she helped her mother campaign for president.
That said it's clear that women far out number men in college especially in graduate school. At some colleges the ratio of women to men is so high that it's a problem for the school. Decades of focus on female opportunity and empowerment at the cost of ignoring young males is now becoming a crisis (crime, unemployment, lack of suitable fathers...). I'm all for women's opportunity and empowerment but there needs to be some balance, far more than there currently is. I wished the plight of young males had been mentioned.
Just my $0.02
Why do we care what she thinks?
Why should we care what an anonymous coward thinks?
Chelsea received an undergraduate degree at Stanford University and later earned master's degrees from Oxford University and Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford in May 2014.
Chelsea Clinton
These are not trivial achievements.
Nor perhaps the pursuits one might expect from a financially secure young woman married, pregnant and living in a $10.5 million dollar condo in Manhattan.
The Clinton family is widely respected and feared politically. It is easy to visualize her mother winning the Democratic nomination, perhaps even taking the White House herself.