San Francisco Public Schools To Require Computer Science For Preschoolers

theodp writes: Never underestimate the ability of tech and its leaders to create a crisis. The S.F. Chronicle's Jill Tucker reports that the San Francisco School Board unanimously voted Tuesday to ensure every student in the district gets a computer science education, with coursework offered in every grade from preschool through high school, a first for a public school district. Tech companies, including Salesforce.com, as well as foundations and community groups, are expected to pitch in funding and other technical support to create the new coursework, equip schools and train staff to teach it. From Resolution No. 155-26A2 (PDF), In Support of Expanding Computer Science and Digital Learning to All Students at All Schools from Pre-K to 12th Grade: 1. "All students are capable of making sense of computer science in ways that are creative, interactive, and relevant." 2. "All students, from pre-K to 12, deserve access to rigorous and culturally meaningful computer science education and should be held to high expectations for interacting with the curriculum." 3. "Students' access to and achievement in computer science must not be predictable on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, language, religion, sexual orientation, cultural affiliation, or special needs." MissionLocal has a two-page SFUSD flyer on the project, which aims to illustrate the "importance of computer science" with the same Code.org jobs infographic that Microsoft used to help achieve its stated goal of creating a national K-12 CS crisis, and demonstrate "disparities in accessing CS education" for SFUSD's 57,000 students with a small-sample-size-be-damned bar chart of the racial demographics of the school district's 209 AP Computer Science participants (181 Asian, 0 African American, 6 Latino, 1 Native American, 14 White, 7 Other).

Comments

Good For Future Training

[CycleFreak]

It's obviously very important to come out of high school with the skills required to train your H1-B replacement.

Re:Good For Future Training

[Talderas]

These kids will be the new H-1B replacements. They're making the skill ubiquitous and thus increasing the amount of supply side talent which will help depress wages.

Re:Good For Future Training

[Penguinisto]

Please... the vast majority of these kids will only retain enough information to be moderately proficient users.

More likely though, the SanFran school system instituted this for the express purpose of flashing a buzzword to the parents, and pretend that they're 'doing something' to improve education.

Re:Good For Future Training

[mysidia]

They're making the skill ubiquitous and thus increasing the amount of supply side talent which will help depress wages.

I'm not personally worried..... my retirement plan is called COBOL, FORTRAN, and the Year 2038 bug.

In the mean time.... I might go back to school and pursue a EECE graduate degree, with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Automation, throw in some data science.

I don't think 90% of their "H-1B replacements" will be able to handle it.

And Coding is already cheap.... the people with CS degrees from University should be doing more sophisticated things such as building a startup, or doing scientific computing work that requires much higher discrete Math that has to be done accurately that they don't even teach in High School.

Re:Good For Future Training

[Penguinisto]

Still... if you're just getting started in CS and want to make a livelihood; it might be a bonafide reason to have second thoughts.

Dude... these are preschoolers. They barely know how to count to 10 in Dec, and if they think of their "grown up" career at all, it's likely to be as an astronaut, cowboy, soldier, princess...

the plumbing of the 21st century

[alen]

this is why i'm going to make sure my kids know to use computers and possibly program as tools and background knowledge but go to school for something really valuable like advanced math

Re:the plumbing of the 21st century

[alen]

yeah, 10 years ago i had an electrician tell me how he spent $68,000 renovating his living room right before he gave me a quote for $3000 for some new outlets in the kitchen

Re:the plumbing of the 21st century

[spauldo]

Plus running the wires, patching and painting any holes in the drywall (or plaster, for older homes), figuring out what the idiot that wired the place was thinking when he ran the wires the way he did, crawling around in the attic or crawlspace (been in a poorly ventilated attic in the dead of summer?) and trying to fish a cable through (possibly through insulation), understanding the applicable codes (federal, state, and local) and making sure your work meets them, liaising with the local power authority if you need to move the outside wire (a herculean effort in some places), oh, and making absolutely sure that your work isn't going to burn the house down and kill people. I can't imagine the insurance is very cheap.

And that's just for residential. Commercial is a completely different world. Go into a factory and start following the conduit sometime.

There's a world of difference between what an electrician has to do and just putting an extra plug over the workbench in the garage.

Re:the plumbing of the 21st century

[vux984]

Because installing outlets is such a tricky operation, right?

Electrical code has a lot of details. And the gotchas tend to come from not knowing that you don't know something. (Yes, one can know that they don't know something. If you know you don't know something, you can look it up.)

What if you don't use a GFCI outlet where one was needed - do you know where GFCI outlets are needed and where they aren't? What if you decide to split an outlet so the top half can be operated by a switch; did you know code requires the two circuits to be on a two pole breaker?

Maybe you do know these things.

But if you don't know then you'll do it wrong, it will still work, and then it will fail an inspection when you sell your home; or your insurance will be void when a fire breaks out and they trace it to your modifications not being up to code.

And if you are in an older building; the electrical may be grandfathered as-is to the code at the time it was built, but as soon as you start making modifications it has to be brought up to modern day code so things can get hairy and expensive fast.

But the point is there is a LOT more to know than black/white/ground and one does not have to be a "moron" not to know.

Computer science and the lowest common denominator

[TWX]

I'm saddened by the misapplication of "computer science" as a term. When I took computer classes, they were not called "computer science" until one was actually supposed to program the computer. Like, open an IDE, write code, and compile it. Classes on computer usage before that were called "technology", "desktop publishing", "computers", and other names that did not include "science".

I don't think that it's appropriate to use computers to teach basic skills to children, but regardless of that perspective, it is wholly inappropriate to call an introduction to computers "computer science".

I smell a rat ...

[ColdWetDog]

"Tech companies, including Salesforce.com, as well as foundations and community groups, are expected to pitch in funding and other technical support to create the new coursework, equip schools and train staff to teach it."

At least they're pretty transparent about it.

Now, one question for you Bay Area folks - Is there any linkage between the folks on the school board and the nice people on whatever city commission that decided that cell phones cause cancer? I'd love to see a meeting with both groups.

Two groups of crazies enter, six leave (this is San Francisco, after all).

You mean those millions of iPads didn't work?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

What, do you seriously mean those millions of iPads we bought for our schools DIDN'T make students any smarter?

Stupidity of Leadership

[Archangel Michael]

Obviously, learning to read, write and do basic math will be set aside for learning how to program.

Here is the problem, these people don't have a clue what is learned at what levels. And while I am all for teaching Computer science and such where it is profitable to do so, starting before kids can even write and do math is not "computer science" at all, it is just dick waving "hey look what I did for the kids!" political crap.

Here's an idea. Why not focus on reading, writing, math and building upon those at the appropriate times? And what about all those kids who don't want to be computer geeks, but rather artists, business people, biologists, doctors, lawyers etc? Are we going to build all those careers into our children's curriculum as well?

The fact is, factory learning is dead, we just don't know it yet. We have spent the last 250 years in factory schools, built using factory ideas to populate our factories with workers. Today, we need a change in how we educate people, so that they are ready for information jobs. This requires scrapping the "one size fits all" education model that is clearly dying (NCLB, Common Core etc), and replacing it with student paced education system where each student has a customized curriculum, based on ABILITY and WILLINGNESS to learn.

Re:Stupidity of Leadership

[tomhath]

I completely agree with you. A big part of the problem is that the best and brightest students in any particular subject area aren't allowed to advance faster than students with "special needs", because that means someone's little snowflake was left behind.

Re:Stupidity of Leadership

[Archangel Michael]

We have to get past "hurt feelings" when people are better than others. Unless you're the best ( which is temporary / fleeting), there is always someone better than you. Customized education allows each person to be exactly what they can and try to be. Nothing more, nothing less. It is the fairest of all approaches.

And given this approach, you might find we are selling a large number of our kids short.

Excellence knows no bounds. Mediocrity is bounded by failure.

Re:Stupidity of Leadership

[AmiMoJo]

Obviously, learning to read, write and do basic math will be set aside for learning how to program.

It seems like you can't really learn to program without know basic reading, writing and maths skills. I think you have the wrong idea about what they will be teaching. It won't be coding, it will be simple logic and sequencing.

When I was about 3 years old I went to pre-school. It was mostly just playing, but one of the toys we had was a programmable vehicle called a Big Trak. You could give it simple commands like "go forward 1m" or "turn left" and it would execute them in sequence. I was the first kid to program it, and I loved making it go forwards 1 metre.

I can't say it set up my career in programming, but it demonstrates that children certainly can learn about programming in a useful way that doesn't detract from their also learning about other important things such as language and maths.

Using computers != Computer Science

[clifwlkr]

I really wish that people would realize there is a big difference from using an app on a tablet or coding up a web page with some javascript to actual computer science. Computer science involves math, design, understanding memory usage, computer architecture, and much more. It is not just hacking out some code. You are not teaching pre-schoolers computer science. Nor are you teaching elementary school children that either.

That said, you should be teaching them basic algebra and logic skills that will be very applicable to many things in life. Absolutely teach them how to use a computer. All kinds of things can be done with that. Don't claim you are teaching them computer science.

I guess it really annoys me because it is like saying a TV repair man is an electrical engineer. Heck, that one is at least slightly closer than calling making a web page being a computer scientist....

Re:Culturally meaningful?

[vlpronj]

As a former K-8 tech instructor, who had to setup "Computer Classes" for the PreK section, I also question what truly culturally meaningful computer science lessons can be taught to PreK classes effectively. Trying to keep them all on track in Millie's Math House was hard enough. My experience has been that if the teachers can use tech effectively, the students don't need "computer science" for a while. You want to do something? Teach LOGO, or an analogue thereof; or just simple circuits. Circuits should fit into a science curriculum well. But OSs, dominant programming languages, input devices, even office suite layouts will likely all be different by the time they're out of 3rd grade.

I never use algebra!!!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> the racial demographics of the school district's 209 AP Computer Science
> participants (181 Asian, 0 African American, 6 Latino, 1 Native American, 14 White, 7 Other).

There is an opinion piece on CNN right now of a Asian guy screaming at Asian parents how rotten they are for doing this.

Well, somebody has to invent the new stuff and medicines you are indignantly voting for politicians to give you for free.

The road to hell...

[lq_x_pl]

something something good intentions.
It is faaaaaar more beneficial to give preschoolers more time doing developmentally appropriate gross and fine motor tasks that sitting them down in front of a computer. The brain is wired by way of the body. If I wanted my kids to have more screen time, I could provide plenty at home. Most kids already spend too much time in front of a screen. They need to be outside, moving.
The most talented programmer I ever met didn't even touch a computer until he was in highschool — his youth was "squandered" outside playing games with his friends and reading books.

Re:Computer science and the lowest common denomina

[MarioXXX]

I have a similar impression. My idea of computer science, is that it's not computer science until you need to read an algorithm book.

Re:Computer science and the lowest common denomina

[Registered Coward v2]

I'm saddened by the misapplication of "computer science" as a term. When I took computer classes, they were not called "computer science" until one was actually supposed to program the computer. Like, open an IDE, write code, and compile it. I don't think that it's appropriate to use computers to teach basic skills to children, but regardless of that perspective, it is wholly inappropriate to call an introduction to computers "computer science".

I'd go a step further and say learning a computer language isn't studying computer science any more than learning a foreign language is studying linguistics. There is a difference between acquiring a specific skill and understanding the concepts and theory behind how the skill is employed.

I thought programming was supposed to be fun.

[cohomology]

Making something "mandatory in all grades" breeds dislike. Young kids often like programming, (or math, or art, or language, or music) and understand right away that it can be fun. Then the schools mess it up. If you haven't read it, I recommend the essay known as Lockhart's Lament:

A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds himself in a society where
music education has been made mandatory. “We are helping our students become more
competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.” Educators, school systems, and the state are
put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and
decisions are made— all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or
composer.

My wife, an educator, just heard me ranting and popped into the room: "Preschoolers need to play. That is the developmentally appropriate thing for them to be doing." She also reminded me that Steve Jobs didn't want his children looking at screens - he wanted them talking and reading.

best developers generally not taught

[peter303]

Many of the creative geniuses in know, including myself, educated ourselves in technology and other subjects. Either the teaching system couldnt handle use, or was concernerned mosty with average students.

Re:best developers generally not taught

[mysidia]

I don't understand why it's all about coding. They would do the world a great service if they would teach early students computer science concepts such as: Combinations and permutations, Probability theory, Set Theory, Analysis of algorithms, Symbolic logic, basic proofs in symbolic logic.

They should keep the questions they ask students simple and involve engagement of the brain always presenting novel problems, rather than emphasizing rote, such as ability to solve practiced problems of a standard form for a time-limited testing session.

Plus confine the nature of tests to questions about theory/background, and limit problems on exams to trivial "Toy" problems that can be worked out mentally in less than 1 minute.

IOW: Evaluation primarily based on submitting assignments, class participation, and participation in group projects measured by the examiner inspecting the development documents and reviewing which tickets were assigned to which student, And what code each student committed.

Just teaching coding.... the average student will need half a semester, before they can successfully write "Hello World"

They might be capable of implementing FizzBuzz on their own after a few years.

BUT they may seriously inspire people or help spark interest in the field, so even if the courses are useless to 80% of the students...... I think it really is worth it to society to require that everyone being schooled has a taste of programming, And that the taste they get is Not biased towards the negative; in other words, the classes should be given in a digestible manner, still with a challenge, but tasks kept simple enough to avoid scaring people away.

Meanwhile in Silicon Valley...

[Thelasko]

...computers are banned from the classroom in a popular preschool.

You're an optimist

[jsrjsr]

From the article:

3. "Students' access to and achievement in computer science must not be predictable on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, language, religion, sexual orientation, cultural affiliation, or special needs."

The easiest way to accomplish that is to punish anyone who gets ahead of the class. WE MUST ALL BE EQUAL!!!

Re:Gap in Curriculum

[Zero__Kelvin]

Modesty isn't a subject, which you would know if you were a creative genius.