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Google Suggests Separating Students With 'Some CS Knowledge' From Novices
theodp writes To address the challenge of rapidly increasing CS enrollments and increasing diversity, reports the Computing Education Blog, Google in November put out an RFP to universities for its invite-only 3X in 3 Years: CS Capacity Award program, which aims "to support faculty in finding innovative ways to address the capacity problem in their CS courses." In the linked-to RFP document, Google suggests that "students that have some CS background" should not be allowed to attend in-person intro CS courses where they "may be more likely to create a non-welcoming environment," and recommends that they instead be relegated to online courses. According to a recent NSF press release, this recommendation would largely exclude Asian and White boys from classrooms, which seems to be consistent with a Google-CodeCademy award program that offers $1,000 bonuses to teachers who get 10 or more high school kids to take a JavaScript course, but only counts students from "groups traditionally underrepresented in computer science (girls, or boys who identify as African American, Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native)." The project suggested in the Google RFP — which could be worth $1.5 million over 3 years to a large CS department — seems to embrace-and-extend a practice implemented at Harvey Mudd College years ago under President Maria Klawe, which divided the intro CS offering into separate sections based upon prior programming experience to — as the NY Times put it — reduce the intimidation factor of young men, already seasoned programmers, who dominated the class. Google Director of Education and University Relations Maggie Johnson, whose name appears on the CS Capacity RFP, is also on the Board of Code.org (where Klawe is coincidentally an Advisory Board member), the K-12 learn-to-code nonprofit that has received $3+ million from Google and many millions more from other tech giants and their execs. Earlier this week, Code.org received the blessing of the White House and NSF to train 25,000 teachers to teach CS, stirring unease among some educators concerned about the growing influence of corporations in public schools.
I'm all for keeping experienced CS students out of intro classes! I was forced to take one of those idiotic intro courses in college, even though I already knew the material! Attendance was mandatory, and no test out option allowed. Complete waste of my time, and it certainly ruined the curve for the true intro level students. I suspect other readers had similar experiences.
... the way to address the diversity issue is to dumb everybody down? Sure, that sounds like it would provide a level playing field, but the goddam field would be below sea level.
Back to the drawing board.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
You'd also then have to teach them to teach.
How about you just let these "seasoned programmers" test out of the introduction classes and jump directly into the non-intro classes? Can't have that, though, as that would promote inequality further by giving them a chance to take sophomore level classes as freshman. Oh the humanity...
Whether you negatively discriminate against some group or positively discriminate for every other group, it doesn't matter what your motives are it's always an injustice.
Liberals: it's racist to help poor blacks from the city while excluding poor whites from Appalachia -- by definition. There's no such thing as "good racism". It's sexist to help girls get into coding while excluding boys. There's no such thing as "good sexism".
The fair way to help some people over others is when you do it based on need and merit. Help poor kids of all types to get into coding. Help kids who's schools don't offer a programming class. Don't test somebody's genes or say their skin has to be darker than 0xE0A070 to qualify -- that's sexist and racist.
If everyone thought like you, this approach might work. While your vision is idyllic, it's completely divorced from reality. Disappointingly, most people DON'T think or act according your logic. The evidence for my argument is all around you, being rubbed in your face, every day of your life. Physically discriminatory stereotypes rule the world you live in (age, race, sex, etc.) and if you are unaware of that then you need to be a lot more introspective.
Since the premise of your argument is wrong, you may need to find a different solution.
A problem exists. WHY?
Here is a scientific way to find out: Walk up to one of them and say "Hi, my name is Tepples, what's yours?". Drop that whole collectivist bullshit.
Drop that whole collectivist bullshit.
Sounds good, as long as we get to keep the land we stole.
Then what's a better term for "people descended from people who were natives of North and South America in AD 1491, who had their land forcibly taken from them in European invasions from 1600 through 1900?"
Humans.
Your argument seems to be contradictory:
1) Everyone in this country is an American.
2) If any group of Americans is underrepresented, it is solely the responsibility of that group to fix the systemic problems within US society that cause that lack of representation.
It seems to me that if we are truly one nation of Americans, we as a nation have a collective responsibility to ensure that nobody gets left behind. If African Americans are struggling educationally, the attitude of, "well, I'm not going to worry about it because it is African American's responsibility to fix the situation," is akin to not worrying about a major US city hit by a natural disaster or your neighbors' house being on fire.
If we are one nation, then the onus is upon every one of us to do all we can to help undermine the barriers that keep a group of Americans, simply through accident of birth, from achieving social parity. You can help by simply volunteering your time, or as Google has done, volunteering your money if you have it (and many Google employees also volunteer their precious time as well).