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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.
Essentially, this would trash the computer science/coding curriculum at most schools. Whereas now the classes consist of motivated students who want to learn, this would cram in all the dullards who don't want to be in the class. Thus it would suck the resources away from the students who want to learn.
Thank goodness he's just a mayor and can't rham his idea through.
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
Essentially, this would trash the computer science/coding curriculum at most schools. Whereas now the classes consist of motivated students who want to learn, this would cram in all the dullards who don't want to be in the class. Thus it would suck the resources away from the students who want to learn.
Bingo. Or as I like to say, Not this shit again." This is another one of those "everybody needs to learn to code!" ideas that are pure bullshit.
Everyone does not need to learn to code. Period. They might benefit from learning the ideas behind programming, but that's not at all the same thing as "learning to code".
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
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.
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).
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.
There are good and bad software developers from India, just like from anywhere else. Some of the most brilliant software people I know are of Indian descent, as well as some of the worst managers I've had. My biggest problem with farming work out to foreigners is that it is a lot easier for them to lie about their qualifications and claim skills that they don't actually have.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Robotics is perfect because it combines different branches of engineering: mechanical, electrical, and software, maybe even optical. Focusing on just coding is short-sighted.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"Writing code is a fun hobby that can turn into a rewarding career. So are a lot of other things." Like sex, for example.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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.
Everyone does not need to learn to code. Period.
A symbolic logic class would be a good idea for all programmers. It helps you learn how do do your Boolean algebra when you're developing code but it also teaches you the difference between "everyone does not need to..." and "not everyone needs to..." ;)
I thought the 'Peeple' website for rating individuals was a really bad idea. After reading this I can actually see some utility in it.
Precisely. I have spent nearly my entire career (over 3 decades) in IT, including working at Microsoft and currently for a Really Big Networking Company Based in San Jose, and this idea is nuts.
The part of my career that I didn't spend in IT was a detour into foreign language teaching (went back to IT after 3 years). Even before that experience, I firmly believed - as person who has formally studied 3 foreign languages and is actually good at one of them - that people should not be forced to study a foreign language. There's no benefit at all to people who aren't motivated, and even among those who are, the benefit is mostly just personal interest. It's not like taking classes in English and basic math; those are things you need in order to function well in society and your career.
Of those three languages, the one I'm good at is the one I studied because I really wanted to learn it. The others were a waste of a time in each of 5 consecutive academic years.
I'd sure hate to be in a programming class where most of the students were only there because Rahm Emmanuel forced them to be.
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?
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?
After you get your A+ certification, you need to get your Network+ certification. As baby boomers retire over the next 20 years, there will be a critical shortage of I.T. workers in the United States.
I agree more comp-sci should be taught, but while thumbing through my copy of the constitution, I'm having difficulty finding where amongst the limited, emumerated rights and responsibility of the Feds are suppose to dictate and do education? I'm failing to see how you can even tie that into interstate commerce?
And for Mr. Rahm Emanuel, I might suggest for him to figure out that while Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, that more people are getting gunned down there than most anywhere else in the US? Why isn't he chanting "black lives matter" there as that blacks are killing each other there at an alarming rate.
I don't think comp-sci teaching will solve that one any time soon....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
True.
Back in the dark ages when I graduated high school one of the required classes was called "comparative government". A few years early it was called Democracy vs Communism but they decided to tone it down a bit. I was in the class with two friends of mine and where actually getting into the class about four weeks into the class the teacher pulled us over and asked us to stop asking so many questions. He simply put it this way, "You guys are going to pass this class with As but I have kids in here that may not pass at all and not graduate. I do not have the time to answer your questions and help them pass."
Maybe a class in logic and critical thing would be a better mandatory class than programing.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
actually the biggest issue is the primary reason for outsourcing is not to improve coding but to reduce pay... as in the apps were far from perfect to begin with and then you added the burden of low cost implementation and what may have been bearable is no longer.
Not indians/(insert girder here) fault. it would be like saying that i don't like paying high executive pay so i am going to outsource to executive secretaries (hmm ok that might work out actually) but you get the idea.
"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.
I'd sure hate to be in a programming class where most of the students were only there because Rahm Emmanuel forced them to be.
I went back to community college to learn computer programming after the Dot Com Bust. Many students in the computer and networking classes were there because computers was the money-major of the day. One of my instructors tried to get a 75-year-old Vietnamese couple to reconsider their major, as no company would ever hire them. When health care became the new money-major of the day, the computer and network classes were abandoned in droves. Even the elderly couple changed their major to health care.
You are not teaching engineering in high school. You need to teach the fundamentals. You can offer a course but again, NOT A REQUIREMENT.
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/
Everyone does not need to learn to code. Period. They might benefit from learning the ideas behind programming, but that's not at all the same thing as "learning to code".
OTOH, everyone ought to learn how to talk to programmers. This is your moment. Don't throw it away.
Pretty spot on. I keep hearing this parroted over and over again and it seems to gain steam more from people that don't understand the engineering involved in proper programming. The best example I have heard is cars are ubiquitous in our society but does that mean everyone needs to learn how to work on them? I can drive a car, extremely well even, without having hardly any clue how it actually operates. Even if we teach "baseline" programming skills, so? What is the end game?
I didn't learn enough in high school to do much beyond create a few small scale applications, games, and scripts that were not of much use to anyone but me (and even then, they weren't major improvements). After college, different story but I majored in CS and now work as a full time software engineer. Even people getting into the field at entry level have issues making a proper application from the ground up. You want to see bug riddled applications that are security nightmares and totally unmaintainable? Let someone who has the high school level of education try to write a basic application and that is what you will get. Hell I remember going to UIL competitions and hearing people from other schools who had 2 years in a CS program start asking 'Alright, now what are these class things again?'
This 'programming should be a basic skill' crap needs to stop. Half of it boils down to companies hoping to flood the market with cheap labor to drive software developers wages down, but it won't happen. They want top skill for bottom dollar. Instead we will end up with a mess of people that know just enough to be dangerous and fuck things up repeatedly because they were 'taught this as a basic skill!'
Some people are much better at it than others, doesn't make a software developer any smarter or more intelligent than those that are not good at it, it is just a different skillset. Other engineering disciplines are equally as intelligent as I am, but I have electrical engineers in my office that fucking program PLCs still not able to grasp everything that my software does... Hell even opposite end of the spectrum with people doing liberal arts work, I've known English majors that I would consider down right brilliant, but they didn't know a damn thing about programming and some said they couldn't learn if they tried...
Bottom line, dumbass talking heads and politicians need to shut up about things they don't understand. And the ass holes at tech companies that keep spouting this needs to be taught to everyone are mostly just greedy. Not saying all though, some programs are actually geared toward giving opportunity to those that wouldn't even have it, but they are not trying to shove it down the populations throat.
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!
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.
Not to mention....the education system should NOT be in the hands of the Feds to dictate what the states teach.
What part of United States don't you understand? Someone has to set the educational standards for the entire country. We can't have 50 states marching to a different drummer, especially when we have a political culture that values ignorance over intelligence.
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.
> Thank goodness he's just a mayor and can't rham his idea through.
Yeah. We sure dodged a bullet there. He's just a mayor. It's not like he's friends with the president or anything.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
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
Everyone needs to know how to operate a computer. That does not mean they need to know how to code.
That's like saying that literacy requires everyone to know how to write novels or encyclopedias.
The thing is? It seems easier to get normal computer literacy today for kids than it ever was for kids to become reading literate. Kids with devices these days figure this stuff out on their own.
We probably could use more coders, but not *everyone*. Just add more money for more seats for quality CS programs for kids who are motivated and interested. And maybe add some money to *introduce* kids to the idea of coding to see if they like it after exposure and more motivated kids join CS classes. But let's not make this a "requirement".
It's more than that.
Adam Smith was a bumbling fool; but even a fool who's using his brain gets a surprising amount right. Even the dumbass republicans and liberals and socialists have a huge swath of good ideas peppered with terrible conclusions. The effort of trying to be right about everything only gets you largely correct and on much better footing; someone will come by and fix the flaws in *my* economic theories one day, even, and the only reason there are any flaws there is because I'd naturally have written *more* *correct* theories if I was capable of recognizing those flaws with my current set of information. Once it's out there in such shape, people will recover the same information in much less time, and have more time to acquire further information to draw more precise conclusions.
Smith talked about the division of labor reducing the amount of waste labor. That's not the cause, but rather a mechanism: we can create new tools and rearrange assembly floors to reduce labor time spent on tasks; but we can also, as Smith observes, redistribute tasks and have new, specialized toolmakers create radically different and expanded sets of tools. For example: creating a power drill divides labor, as Smith suggests, by relying on miners, power plant engineers, infrastructure builders, motor manufacturers, and toolmakers to drive the drilling; but creating a better motor, a more efficient gearing set, and a better-designed drill uses all the same resources in more efficient ways *without* dividing labor.
The suggestion that everyone should learn to program goes against the division of labor principle. As I've demonstrated, this is not inherently wrong; however, it implies that the labor to train programmers is more efficient than the labor to produce specialized programs for the groups of otherwise-specialized laborers who use them. To put it simply: we're saying these particular engineers must also learn to be toolmakers, because hiring out toolmakers is less efficient than training engineers to produce their own tools. For that to be true, it must take the engineers sufficiently little time to make tools, and the tools must be of sufficiently high quality compared to those made by specialized toolmakers; if custom toolmakers can make better, more efficient tools in less time and with better quality to fit the needs of an engineer, then the engineers should spec and buy their tools from a competent toolmaker.
To my understanding, a little knowledge of computers is useful--particularly in data processing, meaning languages like AWK, sed, Perl, python, SQL, MongoDB's query structure, and other data-centric systems--but a full knowledge of large program structure is a waste of time to transfer and to put into use in unskilled hands. A dedicated programmer will accomplish the same output to higher quality in less time than a casual coder. I've made enormous use of sed and awk on the command line to rip through any arbitrary data I need to organize; some Excel knowledge would do me good as well in that use (I've got the basics, but nothing advanced); but everything beyond that is just general knowledge to me, useful and interesting, but not more useful than paying someone else to do it.
This will just devalue computer programmers, until they figure out "any random joe who knows C#" isn't a good computer programmer, anyway. Then they'll all be worth exactly what a college-degree-holding compsci student commands for salary.
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When I worked on the Google help desk in 2008, I had to walk a newly hired Stanford software engineer through the process of turning on his computer. That shocked him. He expected to arrive at a university-style computer lab where someone would turn on the computers for him. Surprising how many software engineers don't know their way around a modern computer as an ordinary user.
Bug report:
Reported by: Joe User
Description: Got an error.
Steps to reproduce: blank
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
Your cell phone, car, microwave oven and even electric toothbrush are all computers.
I remember the push back in the late '70s and early '80s when the educrats were tossing around the term "computer literacy" to try to scare the politicians into giving them more money. A lot of kids who didn't give a shit about coding were forced to waste time writing BASIC programs to shit out multiplication tables and biorhythms.
Rahm Emmanuel should STFU about things he doesn't know shit about. Shame on anyone in Chicago who ever voted for that asshole.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Because they provide funding.
No, they fucking well don't. WE provide funding, and we'd be a lot better off if the federal government didn't usurp a power to interfere with schooling.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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
Somebody tell Rahm that quite soon most software will be written by software.
Like the early text editors that wrote mangled HTML code? If you knew HTML and CSS in the late 1990's, you could wade through the source code to manually fix those misbehaving table cells. Tweny years later, I still write HTML code by hand. I even write Python scripts that write HTML template code. Just because software is written by other software, you still need to know how software works when things go horribly wrong.
While I don't think it is *necessary* to learn to code, I think it can only help.
Then again, if you are talking about things that are *necessary* to learn, we could probably cut out everything except reading and arithmetic.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Worse than destroying pay is destroying moral. There's nothing more painful than working with a bunch of unmotivated and uninterested people. The motivated people are going to "learn computers" without being forced to go to a class.
It's not like he's friends with the president or anything.
The political class doesn't have friends. Rahm and Obama found each other convenient for a while. Either of them would stab the other in the back if there were any political advantage to be gained in doing so.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
A symbolic logic class would be a good idea for all programmers.
A formal logic class (whether heavy on symbols or not) would be a good idea for everyone.
We can all debate how some people just have an "aptitude" for coding and people who don't, and people who just happen to have a certain kind of "intellect" and others who don't. Getting to a high skill level in programming is obviously just not a reasonable goal for most people, nor should it be.
But we could all benefit from being able to think through a problem using logic. Various tests that have been done with the general population tend to show that most people are abysmal at evaluating formal logical arguments.
We used to teach that sort of reasoning in various ways. Geometry classes used to do more formal proofs. Classical languages (especially Latin) were taught in an ahistorical way that turns them into a weird sort of logic exercise in assembling and deducing the meaning of a long convoluted sentence. (I don't think that's a good method for learning actual Latin, but it worked as a logic exercise.)
We used to test it too -- IQ tests had a big portion of it, and the GRE had a whole "analytical" section devoted to logic problems. The SAT used to have "quantitative comparisons" in the math section that required the evaluation and comparison of things in an abstract way, rather than following a simple formula/algorithm to get a precise answer. The verbal section used to have analogies, and one component to understanding how they work is thinking in terms of logic: "If A, then B..." -- how does that relate to a similar relationship "if C, then...."
Etc.
We've gradually moved training and tests in logic out of our school curricula and replaced them with rote learning and step-by-step algorithms. There's a lot of talk in educational reform about "thinking on a higher level," but the reality is that one fundamental skill toward "thinking on a higher level" is being trained in HOW TO THINK.
That's logic. Whether we're going to use a formal logic class or geometry proofs or well-designed coding exercises doesn't really matter. The fact is that most people can get better at thinking logically... if they had any training in it. But we assume that it's a skill that people should just "pick up" -- except most people simply don't. (And this has serious repercussions in terms of people's abilities to evaluate public policy arguments, to be taken in by politicians' or religious wackos' nonsense... etc., etc.)
I personally don't think a required coding course is the answer. But this is part of a bigger problem, and it's not getting better.
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.
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.
You mean like the Founding Fathers who cobble together 13 colonies into a federal government to speak with one voice to the word, set the laws and decide court cases for the entire country?
"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.
A symbolic logic class would be a good idea for all programmers.
A formal logic class (whether heavy on symbols or not) would be a good idea for everyone.
Yes, formal logic class may be a more accurate description of what they need to take.
I suspect, however, that for all people there exists a subset of people for whom a formal logic class would provide no benefit. And for that reason, it would not be a good idea for absolutely everyone to take it. Many, maybe even most, of the people could benefit to a certain extent. But probably not everyone. ;)
You need a refresher course on how an idea become a law. It's called democracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FFroMQlKiag
You first.
A formal logic class (whether heavy on symbols or not) would be a good idea for everyone.
Can you point to any evidence whatsoever that people trained in "formal logic" actually make better real life decisions?
Formal logic is not even particularly useful for logic design. The software tools do it for you. I haven't written out a Karnaugh map in 20 years.
A basic curriculum would include four subjects: Math, Science, Language, Civics
It was a nice theory while it lasted, but it turns out the industry has decided to automate instead.
of all the things that didn't happen, i suspect this happened least of all. did he also try using the cd-drive as a cup holder, or press the 'any key'?
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.
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
There should be a beginners programming course for everyone, going over the basics, like what does CPU stand for and what is a bit and a byte. By the end of the course you can have the kids writing some simple programs. This way hopefully most people won't look at the computer as some sort of magic box, and maybe even get a little appreciation for what it takes to be a programmer. Those kids who have the knack can move on to real programming courses while everyone else will at least know how to program "Hello World".
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
When you're done with the Schoolhouse Rock, you can watch a few episodes of "House of Cards" to get a better perspective. For some reason, "Schoolhouse Rock" left out the arm-twisting, horse-trading, and other backroom dealing necessary to get a bill passed.
Automation will help as the baby boomers retire and the work force shrinks in the next 20 years.
Everyone does not need to learn to code. Period.
Period, period. Or do they?
Everyone doesn't need to learn anything, if we as a culture are satisfied with people not knowing things. Most people only really need to know to read, and maybe some basic arithmetic. And, frankly, there are people who get by their whole lives without it, even in the developed world.
But teaching people that much only takes a couple of years, three, tops. We don't stop there. We teach our students art, and literature, and history, and wood shop, and music, and chemistry, and algebra, and home economics. Why? Why not? Every new thing that people learn makes society better, makes the students themselves better, makes everyone they ever touch better.
Computers are everywhere, and everyone uses them, for hours and hours a day, sometimes. Not a lot of people, by contrast, do a lot of, say, titrating in their everyday life, but we still teach chemistry. There aren't a lot of people who seriously think we shouldn't. Is programming really so esoteric and rarefied a discipline that it isn't worth spending a semester or two on?
While I don't think it is *necessary* to learn to code, I think it can only help.
I agree.
So would learning general First Aid.
So would how to balance a checkbook or bank account.
So would some basic carpentry skills or automotive mechanics.
So would familiarization with electrical theory.
So would learning some basic cooking skills or "smart" shopping skills.
There are a limitless number of things that would help, but learning everything, even a little bit about everything, would probably not be practical. I agree, learning some of the concepts related to coding would be a good thing, but that's not the same thing as "learning to code".
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I've said repeatedly that I think learning some of the concepts related to coding would be a good idea, but that's not the same thing as learning to code.
Not everyone will benefit by learning to code, but I think everyone would benefit by learning some of the ideas behind coding, i.e. analyzing problems, breaking problems into discrete tasks, logical thinking, etc.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
A symbolic logic class would be a good idea for all programmers.
I agree. I've said repeatedly that I think learning some of the concepts related to coding would be a good idea, but that's not the same thing as learning to code.
Not everyone will benefit by learning to code, but I think everyone would benefit by learning some of the ideas behind coding, i.e. analyzing problems, breaking problems into discrete tasks, logical thinking, etc
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Not everyone will benefit by learning to code, but I think everyone would benefit by learning some of the ideas behind coding, i.e. analyzing problems, breaking problems into discrete tasks, logical thinking, etc.
I'm not trying (on this occasion) to be smartassed, but that sounds like trying to teach the theory without the application. But application is actually a powerful teaching aid. I'd guess that teaching people to code is one of the better ways to teach these underlying concepts. The alternative would be like trying to teach people about fractions without using any numerals.
<1980sStandupComic> Which is what this "Common Core" thing is all about, am I right, folks?</1980sStandupComic>
For some reason, "Schoolhouse Rock" left out the arm-twisting, horse-trading, and other backroom dealing necessary to get a bill passed.
Schoolhouse Rock came out during the Bicentennial Year (1976) with a strong emphasis on positive themes. I don't think anyone back then wanted to re-visit "the arm-twisting, horse-trading, and other backroom dealing" behind the three-fifth compromise between the free states and the slave states for the U.S. Constitution. A compromise that led to a Civil War in the 1860's, the civil rights movement in the 1960's and the Black Lives Matter movement today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise
Yeah, I've gotten that one. Also: "program doesn't work"
The three-fifths compromise is hardly the only provision involving arm-twisting, horse-trading, and backroom dealing. Pretty much ANY major bill will involve that (and minor bills will be used as tokens in this dealing).
I've gotten "can't run program" submitted from the feedback form inside the program.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
(hyper competitive, low paid)
Don't know what your definition of low paid is... Tech jobs tend to be significantly above average, what do you think pays better, a low level customer support job - or a fry cook at mcDonalds? (Low end of the wage scale there). I can tell you among things that require a 4 year degree, Computer Science pays better than Liberal Arts majors, many science majors, and quite a few engineering majors. Yes, it is competitive, yes there are problems... otherwise everyone would do it.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
I believe he was describing the way things should work. That does not mean he is ignorant of the way things do work. It comes off as unfounded hostility on your part when you equate the two automatically without something solid to back it up. Welcome to the Internet, right?
Maybe a class in logic and critical thing would be a better mandatory class than programing.
There are far too many well-funded corporate Marketing departments who do not want this to happen and will fight it at all costs.
...
Someone has to set the educational standards for the entire country. We can't have 50 states marching to a different drummer
...
Pardon my ignorance.
How did we get to the moon in 1969 without a Department of Education to set educational standards for the entire country?
The only formal logic class that I took that wasn't also a symbolic logic class was worse than a waste of time. It took ideas that should have been simple, made them fuzzy, and convinced the students that hadn't taken symbolic logic that they understood them.
OTOH, I'm prejudiced. As a freshman in high school I convinced myself to start working my way through Russel's Principia Mathematica (a very bad idea, but not as bad as a non-symbolic formal logic class).
There is a long tradition of logic fostering argument and disputations without ever coming up with a decent proof. This is not a thing to encourage the continuation of. It's as bad as rhetoric. (The school of rhetoric was founded in Rome by Cicero to teach the students to win political argument without considering the merits of the argument. It's successors flourish wildly, but I wish they could be exterminated.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Critical thinking would be good. So would epistemology. Logic I'm much more dubious about. In real time situations there's never time to apply logic, and non-symbolic logic logic classes are, in my experience, worse than a waste of time. Basic stuff like syllogisms would be reasonable, but that can easily be handled within a critical thinking class. It would also be good to teach how to handle excessive stack depth problems. E.g.:
Consider, you are in an art gallery, and a man it there standing beside a picture. He says:
"Brothers and sisters have I none, but that man's father is my father's son."
Who is he?
Once you work it out the answer is obvious. If you forget, and need to work it out again it's nearly as hard the second time, because of excessive stack depth. So it's a general kind of problem that you need to learn ways to deal with.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
No, but it's quite reasonable to eliminate trig for dullards. And computer programming is more like trig than like reading.
Everybody should be taught the basics, to the extent that they are capable of learning them. Everyone should be allowed to earn entrance to the advanced topics (by demonstrating both mastery over the basics and interest). To say that everyone should take the advanced topics is as silly as saying that everyone should take cabinetmaking. Civilization *needs* cabinets, but it doesn't need everyone to be a cabinetmaker.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Adam Smith was a lot better than you give him credit for, but you do need to take him in his original context, and as an economics theorist rather then the carrier of the word of god.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I actually had a great rant about this only earlier today while public speaking.
I like to ask a room full of 'engineers' (IT guys) to solve the following :
If a rectangle has a perimeter of 30 and one side is twice as long as another, how long are the sides?
I'm pretty sure I took this question from a story on Slashdot or The Register about how they interview ivy league students and found only 30% could solve it. The reason for this is obviously that once we think we don't need something anymore, we forget it. So once their SATs are passed, all their math pours out of their heads.
The results I get are scary and of course expected. I've had rooms of 20 'engineers', some recent graduates from 'great universities' who actually had to think about it. My son at 11 years old solved it in his head in about 12 seconds and could explain clearly why.
I've use this question to make an obvious point which is that very little of our education after the 4th grade has any meaning at all. Most of it if retained has little value to the overwhelming majority other than trivia. I estimate that 99.995% of all students required to learn polynomials in high school have absolutely no idea how or where to apply them to any applied task. The education in polynomials for the masses is an obscene waste of time. As for history and literature... all one needs to do is what Fox or CNN to realize that even the guys who should have studied these don't have any idea how to apply their educations to their work.
I also brought up that my nephew told me he couldn't take home economics because of lack of teachers. I was highly disappointed since I consider that class possibly the most important class they ever taught in high school. It teaches us how to actually manage our lives, prepare food, control portions, increase our families physical activities, manage our personal finances, repair our clothing... when we did things the proper American way which is all f-ing wrong and way overboard in the 60s and bras were burned and women felt the only way out of the barefoot/pregnant role was to reject all forms of "women's work" instead of the more intelligent method which is "Teach your sons and daughters household management" instead of just your daughters, we actually lost the knowledge required to manage a home and family.
Schools really need to make home ec a 4 year course and include household carpentry,
You said: "Bottom line, dumbass talking heads and politicians need to shut up about things they don't understand."
You do, of course, realize, this would render politicians almost continuously silent.
Please tell me more about this plan. I would be happy to support it.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
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.
No, they take too much of our tax money and they try to blackmail states into being subservient.
It is OUR money to begin with, and it is better spent in the states where the local people have a much stronger local voice in how things are done.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Perhaps you need to bone up on your old civics classes...that is PRECISELY how the US was set up..to have a weak Federal govt. with most of the power residing in the states, which are local and more answerable to the people that live within them. If you don't like how things are in one state, you are then free to move to another state which is more similar to your beliefs and style of living.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I offer no guarantees, as bad stuff does happen and things don't always go according to plan. In particular, what to do if you become the victim of an accident, crime or natural disaster is beyond the scope of my previous post.
All I wanted to do is to give a few tips on how not to fall on the debt trap by yourself, things that are within your reach.
I've been in my current job for 15 years. Before this, I had two other jobs, none of them lasted a whole year. In the first one, I was laid off because I was stupid and didn't do well enough. In the second one, I quit because I didn't like my new position.
I stayed at my current job mainly out of patience and usefulness. I learned a lot while at this job, and I weathered plenty of awful moments, and I also helped build a legacy that's still in use today. I've seen a lot of other people come and go, we're always looking for new personnel but most applications are quite unsatisfactory.
I learned about apprenticeships while I was wasting my time at University, but unfortunately this is something that you find out by chance; they don't really talk enough about the chances you could have at your disposal to further your career while you're pursuing undergraduate studies. Maybe they want students to look for those chances themselves. I'm sad to see that you missed it out.
They specifically want students because they're perceived as more malleable and trainable and less overqualified for the job than graduates. As you're already graduated, they expect you to be ready for the kind of position a graduate can do, they want you to already have built that experience. as I've never been in your position, there are other people that can give you better advice.
Oh, I forgot to say. I got my current job specifically because my hobbies seemed unusual and interesting while still related to my field. Think about what else have you achieved so far besides your degree, maybe if you include that in your resume you will be considered in your next job.
--- Sueños del Sur - a webcomic about four young siblings
You mean like European Union, a collection of nation states with individual educational, economic, and defense policies?
Sure we can. Even better, we might have 25000 high schools each marching to a different drummer, with parents making the decision where their kids should go. Among other things, that's a good idea because we have 15 million high school students, each marching to his own drummer, and with their individual needs, interests, and abilities, that are best met by offering a wide variety of different school environments and curricula.
And the solution you see to that is to give that same political culture complete control over our educational system???
But that's not what they did. Although the Founding Fathers created a federal government that provided diplomatic representation, could pass laws, and could decide court cases, they sharply limited the areas in which that federal government could do anything. That is, according to the Constitution, the federal government can pass and decide some law, but most law remained in the hands of the states and localities.
In particular, what to do if you become the victim of an accident, crime or natural disaster is beyond the scope of my previous post.
All I wanted to do is to give a few tips on how not to fall on the debt trap by yourself, things that are within your reach.
Thanks for the initial tips. They sound a lot like what Dave Ramsey recommends, and someone who doesn't already listen to Dave Ramsey's show could learn something. But as of right now, the largest cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States is health care costs and lost wages due to serious health problems.
Once they fail, maybe the large software corproations of the world will see:
1) Only 30% of people out there can think through to code anything substantial, and
2) Of those 30% only 5% want to do it for a living.
3) These people have a skill that is worth more value to them than they are currently willing to pay.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
That's fine in theory. That's not what happened historically over the last 239 years. The country got bigger, the government got bigger. You can't have limited government in a large country, especially with a population estimated to hit 400+ million in 2050.
Of course it's not. But you cited the Founding Fathers as authority for your belief for expanded federal government powers, and I was pointing out how idiotically wrong your example was.
We're not talking about "limited government" in general, we are talking about limited federal government, that is, the government of a federation of states. And a large degree of autonomy and self-government of states and counties inside a larger federation works just fine.
If you don't like how things are in one state, you are then free to move to another state which is more similar to your beliefs and style of living.
Or we could uniform laws, which we do as many states enact laws that are identical or similar to corresponding federal laws, and living in one state is really no different than living in any other state.
You do realize that the Texas Board of Education decides what go into the textbooks not only for Texas but pretty much the rest of the country?
No matter where you live, if your children go to public schools, the textbooks they use were very possibly written under Texas influence. If they graduated with a reflexive suspicion of the concept of separation of church and state and an unexpected interest in the contributions of the National Rifle Association to American history, you know who to blame.
When it comes to meddling with school textbooks, Texas is both similar to other states and totally different. It's hardly the only one that likes to fiddle around with the material its kids study in class. The difference is due to size—4.8 million textbook-reading schoolchildren as of 2011—and the peculiarities of its system of government, in which the State Board of Education is selected in elections that are practically devoid of voters, and wealthy donors can chip in unlimited amounts of money to help their favorites win.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jun/21/how-texas-inflicts-bad-textbooks-on-us/
And the solution you see to that is to give that same political culture complete control over our educational system???
As opposed to the local school board that can never find money to reduce class sizes and buy supplies for teachers, but has no trouble finding money to build a brand new football fieldl? I can't tell you how many times I've seen that played out in California.
How many Americans died because of the three-fifths compromise? (Hint: The Civil War had ~750,000 deaths.)
What difference does it make? If every major bill involves horse trading, arm twisting, and backroom dealing, the fact that a particularly pernicious Constitutional provision also did is unremarkable.
You were complaining that Schoolhouse Rock left out the horsetrading. I pointed that Schoolhouse Rock focused on positive themes during the 1976 Bicentennial Celebrations. Maybe Schoolhouse Rock should have done an episode on the three-fifths compromise.
I'm just a slave
Yes, I'm only a slave
And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill
Well, it's a long, long journey
To the capital city
It's a long, long wait
While I'm worth only three-fifths of a white man
But I know I'll be a free someday
At least I hope and pray that I will
But today I am still just a slave
The more you put the federal government in charge of education, the more you will replicate California's failures across the country.
You don't need the federal government to build new football fields across the country. The local school boards are doing a fine job emulating California in that regard.
You are a citizen of your state first, and a citizen of the United States second. There are often vast differences in states (TX gun laws vs NY gun laws for instance)...so, depending on how you wish to live with respect to those laws...you have full choice of those two or other states with varying differences in-between.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
And California decides fucking emissions standards often for the rest of the country too..what's your point?
Hey, if a state wants different school books, they can demand them...just will have to pay a bit more but no one holds a gun to their head to by the one true school book.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
but you do need to take him in his original context, and as an economics theorist rather then the carrier of the word of god.
I'm sure if I had the same information as Adam Smith I may have reached the same conclusions. My brain is habitually tuned to perform complex simulations by a representative process of progressive elaboration, so I can usually "figure things out" faster than other people and in more detail; this is simply something most people haven't taught themselves, and still doesn't produce good results (or produce results very quickly--sometimes I have to spend months generating new information) if the input is bad.
Still, the idea that work is decreased exclusively by division is ludicrous. Anyone familiar with discrete mathematics will immediately recognize the converse situation: can you find a way, without combining work, to make the same players do the same work less efficiently? Yes. Then there are obviously ways to simply streamline some subset of processes which exist, have existed, or will exist to produce the same output with less labor, and division of labor is only one way to do that.
Division of labor is a large source of efficiency improvement; it's not the only source, but it's a considerable one.
Also I don't like the theories of value. Macroeconomics has historically been about shopkeepers theorizing why goods have such a price tag. Land theory of value, labor theory of value, subjective theory of value... hasn't anyone thought to write a theory of wealth, identifying how large economies and large economic interactions change things like poverty, standard of living, income distribution, tax structures, the possibility of welfare, population growth, and so forth? Apparently not; they write about markets and call it macroeconomics.
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Well, that sucks. Probably "Live a healthy lifestyle in order to minimize healthcare costs" should be added to my list.
I live in one of the countries in green so what do I know.
--- Sueños del Sur - a webcomic about four young siblings