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Chicago Mayor Calls For National Computer Coding Requirement In Schools (thehill.com)
theodp writes: On Thursday, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called on the federal government to make computer coding classes a requirement of high-school graduation (video). Back in December 2013, Emanuel — who previously served as President Obama's chief of staff — joined then-Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett to announce a comprehensive K-12 computer science program for CPS students, including a partnership with then-nascent Code.org. "[Y]ou need this skill Make it a high-school graduation requirement," Emanuel said. "They need to know this stuff. In the way that I can get by kind of being OK by it, they can't.
"Chicago Mayor Calls For Incarceration of the National Computer Coders In Schools"
Because everyone got an A+
Writing code is a fun hobby that can turn into a rewarding career. So are a lot of other things. Making it a requirement to graduate from high school? No. God damn it some people are stupid and take things too far.
He hates engineers, and he wants to flood the market in order to destroy our pay. Destroy our pay.
What's really needed are courses in things like "How not to fall into the debt trap" and "Why being educated is actually worth some effort so you don't end up on welfare", etc.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Good, so they can teach the indians how to take their jobs.
Sorry. Coding and STEM are not the same thing. There is a need for everyone to at least be exposed to STEM but the majority will never need nor want to be coders.
" joined then-Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett"
Byrd-Bennet was indicted this morning for taking millions in kick-backs.
It's one things to say that all schools would have to require it as an elective (which means they have to deal w/ trying to find qualified teachers, etc).
But requiring all students to learn it? Hell no. Jeff is right, it's just another skill. Sure, it's great that I rebuilt a lawn mower engine back in high school ... but we didn't even spend a full semester on that.
Every time some new 'requirement' comes along, something else is going to need to get bumped -- how many schools still have a shop class, or home ec? I'd much rather see home economics be a requirement again, and bring in some lessons on compound interest, savings, and why gambling and money lenders suck, rather than just cooking & sewing. (and if it were all about saving money, then shop class should count as 'home ec', too).
If you want more people to take programming classes ... reclassify it as a foreign language. Then kids could decide to take it instead of French or Spanish, without it meaning that they need yet another class to graduate.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
theodp is obsessed with this topic and code.org in general. Who is he, and what is his purpose? And why does all of his submissions make it automatically to the front page? They aren't making from votes from the firehose or via merit. Is there a payoff here?
Too many of them can't teech reeding, writting, speeling, or adition, subtrraction, multplcation or dvision.
Looking at the graduation rate, I think they have bigger concerns.
This may be slightly off topic, but I always wondered whether high school graduation should be mandated by law, with the punishment being either a school camp or house arrest until the degree is obtained. I'd imagine the betterment of the younger people would give them more options in life and benefit society.
Let's be perfectly clear here: If you get a highschool diploma, and stop your education ... you will not be programming computers.
If you think you're going to have a bunch of kids coming out of highschool who are the programming workforce of the future ... you have decided to set your kids future up so that they will be the low-paid programmers who only have a highschool diploma.
Somehow we've let a bunch of rich people who work in technology to convince the world that everybody needs to know how to program a computer. And this is largely so they can have a large workforce of cheap fucking labor.
The people telling us this don't give a shit about your kids. They give a shit about driving down wages for their own profits.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Bored /. editors who weren't able to find another "more women in coding" story, slaps up another "more programming in education" story.
Tomorrow's scope: VW engineers screwed the pooch (again).
Somebody tell Rahm that quite soon most software will be written by software. Although having a basic understanding of logic and how computers work is useful for predicting their behavior and analyzing their failures, but teaching everybody how to write code isn't that useful. And besides, it drives down the profits I can make as a software engineer!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So the Chicago school districts which are grossly underfunded piles of crap are going to magically extract the funding for a comp sci program from a laughing pony's asshole? All so they can fall into debt trap anyway because they can't afford college, and a company isn't going to hire a high school graduate whose only coding experience is babies first intro to Python? 100% bullshit.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
Cars are vital to the economy and we don't try to force everyone to become mechanics.
Typical liberal response. Something is such a good idea it should be a law. Sigh.
A week ago news broke that Chicago was padding its graduation rates. (They're really around 66% - yikes.)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
Then there's the story from TODAY about Chicago's school chief agreeing to plead guilty to bribery:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
To me, this "code for all" announcement mainly seems timed to distract from the fact that Chicago's public schools are horribly ineffective dumps run by hacks.
I thought the 'Peeple' website for rating individuals was a really bad idea. After reading this I can actually see some utility in it.
These types of things should be left to the colleges. Not made madatory at the highshcool level..
For example, if a student wants to become a specialist in sports injury therapy. How does this move apply to them?
What as a society do we get out of programming our children to be coporate shills?
How does this impact those with learning disabilites?
and yes, why dont we focus on money management instead, promote skills that will help in a life long journey. for example: Driving, cooking, mathematics, etc..
I see coding workign for about 10 years, then what??
Thewre was a program on cable last week, about Obamma fixing the "system"
The program went on to describe how law makers are finally comming to realization that their inital statememts about minium mandatory sentences they were wrong.. and Time TOLD...
that why our prision system is so fucked up..
but aside from that,
wher eis the conclusive evidence that this education move will benefit the population at large?
Who benefits from this, the kids, society, the companies providing the "training", the schools, the universities, our local communities, and/or what about the world around us?
The world needs more compassionte people, which has been brought up time and time again. I dont see any arguments about forcing students to take compassion and sensitivity classes for graduation.. But think about it for a sec..if that were the case and it was enforced what woudl our society be like if trained for sensitivity, and compassion.
Wow thats a real paradigm shifter..
Lets all force our wills on others in society, and feel good about it..
I remember when those experiments were tried,,
PROHIBITION, and or THE WAR ON DRUGS, and we all know how those turned out..
at the end of the day,
All alone running free a little bit better than I used to be..
v
Not even prisoners who take classes are forced to learn how to code. WTF is wrong with these bureaucrats? Some kids want to be artists, musicians, architects or doctors. How does forcing them to learn programming help anyone at all, other than ballooning the school's budgets and wasting more money?
I agree that attempting to track every school kid into the glorious future of (hyper competitive, low paid) tech employment is folly.
However, I think that learning to code can be a real benefit to any person's intellectual development, insofar as it allows you to abstract problems, prototype solutions and thus think through problems that might be impractical or too expensive for many people to experience in "real" life.
Perhaps Hizzoner should make sure students are learning reading, writing, and arithmetic (and maybe some history and science too) in the Chicgao Public Schools before becoming concerned with national requirements for computer coding?
First he closes a ton of schools.
Then he says they need to learn 21st century skills.
The above poster hit the nail on the head. It might be good to have all schools offer coding classes to HS students. It is pointless to require it. No one who hires coders should be thinking "I'll just get someone fresh out of of high school to code this". Many people in our American educational system are headed for jobs as short order cooks, garbage men or NFL players and would never use such training and would be much better off focusing their limited abilities on learning to read. Coding should be for those motivated to learn it, not a course where the same thing has to be presented ten different times in ten different way do as not to leave behind those dedicated to disrupting teaching.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
it's about the analytical and problem solving skills that are developed as you write the code. the code is secondary. but, you would net a better overall benefit across a student body by requiring regular expressions (regex) be taught in schools instead of making ''coding'' a 'graduation requirement'.
"Make it a high-school graduation requirement," Emanuel said. "They need to know this stuff."
I recall a moment in college when I was standing in the ruins of classic Rome with a friend of mine, reading to him a sign in one of the structures indicating where Julius Caesar was stabbed, and having him ask me, "Who's Julius Caesar?" Smart guy, graduated from college in three years, and has been a middle school science teacher ever since.
A central problem with our K-12 educational system has been too many cooks, i.e. politicians, in the kitchen. The central message they have been preaching without ceasing has been "More, more, more," and schools continue to suffer. Schools have become bloated with educational mandates that keep adding to the curriculum, and expect it sooner. For example, 25 years ago, my kindergarten classroom met for a half-day three days a week, where we learned our ABC's, learned how to count from 1-10, and otherwise drew crude drawings with crayons and played on the playground. Now every kindergartner needs to know how to read. The Finns still enjoy play time, and who has the better test scores? And don't get me started on Algebra expectations...
If we really want students to succeed, we need to give them room to grow by relaxing curricula standards, not adding more to them. If a smart guy can get through college and succeed in life not knowing who Julius Caesar was, does he need to know how to program a computer?
In my personal opinion, beyond the 8th grade, I think the only class every student should be required to take by law nationally is Civics. The care and maintenance of our nation depends on it. Leave the rest up to the states, and let national benchmarks like the ACT and SAT serve as a common metric students can measure themselves by.
"They need to know this stuff. In the way that I can get by kind of being OK by it, they can't."
Maybe instead of computer language, the mayor should focus on spoken language first. What the heck is he saying with the second quoted sentence?
I will only allow my child to program in scheme.
I'm not a professional programmer - OMG, if I was, I'd shudder to think what would happen - but I did programming back as school in the 80's and 90's and have kept it up as a hobby ever since. I'm one of those engineers who went into product management and I've found coding terrifically helpful as a tool at work, just like presentation skills, personal skills, negortation skills etc. I've used it to create demo content for conferences (ActionScript) (got an award for that one), analyze customer requests via simulating their proposed algorithms and showing they were ineffective (Java), deduce requirements for lifetime UV exposure of a product (Matlab, Excel), model product uptake, etc. etc. When I get stuck, I work with engineering, but I like to keep them focused on their real job. Having a mindset that knows you can apply code to data and get answers is super important. Even knowing that this is possible would be one step up from nothing.
Because I'm sure they have the students best interest in mind
but I have my own obvious bias
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
This 'computer programming' problem, shows that politicians, think tanks, and media can be bought. In particular by Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, IBM, etc, in an effort to get more h-1bs. Is it a wonder Washington is distrusted?
First lets get rid of the Dept. of Education. Then let Rahm ram this through in Illinois. If it's a catastrophe (likely) then damage is contained to that state. If it's a success, then other states can implement it.
Dude,, you should pull back the offensive comments,,
It's easy to get your point across with out the de-meaning others in the community??
May I ask, did you go through the proposed program? If so did it get in the way of your social studies classes??
I agree this is nonsence to the nth degree, but there is a more socially acceptable way to convey your point..
Put into perspective,
there is a time and place for everything, the word "faggot" as used above has no place in society and just elevates/surfaces your lack of intelligence and compassion for your fellow man/woman..
Way to go /., another comment which should have been modded off, modified to remove the offinsive commentary, and or perhaps should not have even been published. Very Inflamatory.
You don't need a mechanical engineering degree to be able to flush a toilet. You don't need to go to the Bondurant school to be able to drive a car. You don't need an electrical engineering degree to plug in an electric appliance. And you don't need to know how to code in order to use a computing device.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Are teachers who teach computer programming even required to know how to program beyond writing an Excel macro? This just seems so pointless forcing students to take what will likely be a very rudimentary programming class in budget-strapped schools while allowing teachers to gain their certifications without the requisite programming knowledge themselves.
Not computer programming.
Just like drivers ed. vs auto shop. Required vs elective. Duh.
Learning to code is like taking an electronics class, i.e. its like an elective "shop" or "lab" class not like a core subject such as math.
This is just the latest and greatest "magic bullet" that is going to "fix" the educational system. It will fail. The solution is to spend more time on core subjects like math and reading and science so that students who have any sort of interest or curiosity about electronics or coding or robotics will be better prepared to be introduced to those specialties.
Its not that different from the 80s "magic bullet" of an Apple II with Turtle Graphics. Sure, it was great for those with any interest or curiosity about coding but not so much for anyone forced to do the coding. It did not "fix" education.
Honestly, seeing what I'm seeing as a "veteran" with 20+ years of experience, I feel this is probably the last gasp for average developers and IT people to command a good salary. Offshoring, visa programs, coder bootcamps and yes, these "everyone must learn to code" programs are going to mean a flooded market. This, along with most development centering around locked-down walled garden environments like phone apps, will reduce salaries over time because the _average_ skill level required to get something _working_ will drop. Since Agile development breaks up tasks into neat little packages, and makes code quality a secondary feature, and users are willing to accept low-quality code, you can just farm out a dev project to average people and get something that "works" back.
Good developers are still going to be in demand for non-throwaway systems, and good IT people will still be needed to manage things well. But sending everyone to a mandatory Ruby on Rails or whatever course just doesn't make any sense. Almost no one will make a career out of it. Why not teach basic life skills, like how not to get fooled by lenders into getting stuck in debt, or how to cook/clean for yourself, or basically live on your own? I'd argue you need those skills more than anything else, and kids from crappy households don't get this kind of education from their parents sometimes.
Wow,, doesn't that say something about our society??
that A food related management school that spits out managers at $15 and below an hour, is recognized bu the council of education? Oldest and most recognized body of higher education?
while I agree most people in that respected field work hard, and do get what they have comming, but I find it shocking that out of all the educational institutions here in the US.. Hambuger U comes out on top as the most recognizable educational entirety out there..
ya no, i dont think so..
Moving past that, its a shcool that promotes poor quality of food, poor quality work env, poor management judgement, and not compensating your fellows to a point where they can live in their own societies they serve?? Take california for example..
"The only active QSR currently to receive college credit recommendations from theAmerican Council on Education (ACE), the United States’ oldest and most recognized unifying body for higher education"
Just "No."
We need to stop pretending that our addiction to smell phones and PCs is healthy, and that the rudimentary skills taught in a high school are going to produce "the next big app" or even a job.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Stupid for two specific reasons:
1) Stop requiring shit at the federal level. Education decisions should be made at the local and state level. You can require whatever you want in Chicago, but leave the rest of us alone. The federal government has a hard enough time doing the job that it is mandated to do in the Constitution.
2) Not everyone needs to know how to code. It's a waste of time. Not everyone needs to take shop class. Not everyone needs to take home economics.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Give a man a stolen credit card, and he eats for a day. Teach a man how to code, and he can steal credit cards for the rest of his life.
The political fascination with coding is ridiculous. The last time I checked, we still need plumbers, electricians, welders, and equipment operators as well. Why not make those skills mandatory as well?
Hell, before any of that, let's step up drivers ed first. Many newly minted high-school graduates can't drive a manual transmission, or change a flat tire, or jumpstart a car.
Teach them how to do basic home maintenance, budget management, interview skills, and professionalism as a requirement of graduating. You'll make a world of difference and they'll use all of it.
Along the lines of "Everyone" in the USA drives a car so we should all be required to take an auto shop class in High School. The auto shop class at least helps everyone deal with the cars that they have - only a small percentage of people truly need to be able to code, the rest may need to be able to use a computer, and a few people need to be able to hire computer programmers to take the money that they raised from Angel Investors.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
What we lack is experienced CS workers. H-1B is preventing citizens from getting the necessary experience that would make them hireable. All this would do would be to make programmers less valuable, which will dramatically lower the quality of code.
I mean we want to make the best generation better drivers, don't we? Then why aren't we doing it?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
A more general IT course would be better as a requirement. It could cover the relationship between clients and servers/clouds, what an OS is and isn't, normalization and data relationships (one-to-many, many-to-many, etc.), pro's and con's of different kinds of data keys/id's, encryption techniques, etc.
They will likely need to know a bit about such in the work-place even if they are not a coder. Coding is only one aspect of IT.
It's better 100% of students are slightly less naive about general IT which at least 90% will use at work, compared to 100% prepared for a career in coding that only 3% will end up in. It's not a logical use of school resources and time to put a coding class over an IT class.
Table-ized A.I.
She is going to plead guilty and go to jail for giving her former employer a 20 million dollar no-bid contract for Principal training.
Just FYI.
We need kids who know the law, who understand finance, who will become actual citizens.
We need kids who will become carpenters, electricians, plumbers and other skilled trade workers. Construction is facing a critical shortage of workers as the foreign-born workers went home after the Great Recession, others got jobs in different industries, and most will retire in the years to come. We don't need more lawyers or Wall Street finance guys. We need people who can rebuild America.
Yes. Perhaps they should first concentrate on students achieving at least a reasonable standard of reading comprehension, writing (and I know I'm going out on a limb here) grammar and spelling competence.
Instead of passing students through like shit in a goose regardless of performance.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Otherwise, what is the point of having tons of kids who can code who can't find jobs?
"We need kids who will become carpenters, electricians, plumbers and other skilled trade workers. "
Agreed, but the construction industry isn't unionized everywhere, and the only way to ensure a pipeline of skilled workers vs. "the guy down the street with a reciprocating saw" is apprenticeship programs. This, plus middle-class pay wages will bring people back into the trades. Right now, the anti-union rhetoric is very strong outside of the Northeast and California. Without training, a career path and salary progression, and worker protections, the field will continue to be filled with low skilled foreign workers, just like we're seeing in dev/IT.
You first.
Let's teach the kids a skill they can really use: selfie training!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Good old Rahm.... famous for cornering people in the capital shower room wearing nothing more than a towel, when they didn't want to talk to him.....
What next, a requirement for all students, to learn auto repair? Given the situation in Chicago, perhaps he should be more concerned with teaching his kids to read and write before they graduate from 8th grade and work on the black on black murder rate..... Failing ONE MORE CLASS (eg. computer programming) and being passed through school isn't going to fix that.
Never spend more than what you can earn.
So what should somebody who is temporarily disabled or laid off do?
Never lose your job while indebted.
What steps ought one to take to guarantee this, especially before being in the workforce long enough to build enough net worth to self-insure for unemployment?
How about looking for an apprenticeship?
I did, but I had already graduated before I learned that apprenticeships/internships in my area were intended for current undergraduate college students. What's the next step for someone in my position?
If you're not ready to have children, you're not ready to have sex.
What steps ought one to take to guarantee that one will not be forcibly raped? Or is it common for rape victims to sue rapists in civil court for child support, win, and collect? A convicted rapist serving a prison sentence for rape can't pay child support, as far as I can tell.
In Russia, they had mandatory CS in high schools from eighties, late seventies. Look where they are now.
I would suggest that Mr. Emmanuel first figure out how to teach these people not to kill each other.
I'm old enough to remember they tried this in the 80's. Computer programming was the future and everyone had to know how to do it.
That's like saying people in the 20's all needed to know how to be car mechanics. It's a colossal waste of time for most people. You don't need to know how to *program* a computer to know how to *use* a computer, which is a more useful skill.
A skill, incidentally, that most kids have mastered by the time they're about five years old.
I find it hard to believe Johnny Football parlayed the BASIC skills he learned on an Apple ][ in 1985 into a marketable skill in 2015. I was already a nerd by then and knew more about programming than our teacher, and perhaps a couple other future nerds benefited by it, but most people don't need to know how the hot dogs are made.