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WSJ: New Education Bill To Get More Coding In Classrooms
theodp writes: The WSJ's Yoree Koh reports that computer science has been recognized as important an academic subject as math and English in the new Every Student Succeeds Act, putting it on equal footing with other subjects when state and local policymakers decide how to dole out federal funds. The law is likely to be a boon for tech companies, Koh adds, which constantly face a shortage of engineers to hire, and have backed Code.org to lobby for computer science teaching in schools. "This legislation will increase access to STEM and computer science learning nationwide and will advance some of the goals outlined in Microsoft's National Talent Strategy," said Microsoft in a blog post. "ESSA makes a number of significant improvements to expand access to computer science education by diverse populations in urban, suburban, and rural areas," explained the ACM. As far as CS and STEM goes, the bill calls for "increasing access for students through grade 12 who are members of groups underrepresented in such subject fields, such as female students, minority students, English learners, children with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged students."
If this was approached with the same rigor that we teach calculus or chemistry then perhaps it could be okay.
But it seems more likely to turn into "create another generation locked into proprietary tools". And instead of teaching (a) CS theory and (b) machine architecture so that people can understand things independent of any particular language or tools, we'll turn it into another "memorize and regurgitate" exercise, where kids will forget everything just after the class because they never really understood it to begin with.
We desperately need more tech literacy, so that people can make good decisions about the products and services they use and buy, and so that they can be competent to handle non-dumbed-down computing. But I will eat my hat if this turns into anything more than a form of advertising for Microsoft/Google/Apple. Already i see this with movements to get kids hooked on Google Docs, getting them used to the idea that all their data should be given to an advertizing company for safe keeping.
The government has two major initiatives in computer science:
A) They've finally realized we're WAY behind in "cybersecurity" and it's costing us billions every year. The percentage of code written by people who don't actually know what they're doing isn't just an economic problem; it's turning into a national security issue.
B) They've decided to teach EVERYONE how to write a bit of code, without really understanding what they're doing.
If this were the 1980s and we were still primarily using Disk Operating System to run software on our Personal computers, (B) might be okay. People would be learning just enough to screw up their files on their floppy. We're not using DOS anymore. It's now web apps used over the internet. The "coders" who don't understand are writing web services in .Net and PHP scripts which they put on the internet, where they are attacked constantly.
The consequences of improperly designed software systems have increased 10,000 fold. A little knowledge is truly a dangerous thing when writing software for the internet. We don't need every worker publishing their own little poorly-designed web api to their part of the company database that they wrote in Excel and published from via Access. We need to recognize this is dangerous to other people, including customers, so we need it done better, by people who choose to specialize in the field. Designing software systems (for the internet) isn't so much like reading and writing English, it's more like designing buildings. You want it done right much more than you want it done by everyone.
A marked-up document (.docx) from July on the website of the STEM Education Coalition, which counts Microsoft as a member, seems to attribute the enrichment eligibility criteria clause to NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Last year, Gillibrand said, "Typically, in STEM fields, science, technology, engineering and math, it's typically white men. Very few women, very few minorities, very few from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. So we want to change that."
skills that are practically useful in life, such as
1. Self reliance (how to cook, how to do minor repair works around house, etc)
2. Think broadly (do projects that encompasses everything from planning, prototyping, executing, teamwork etc.)
3. Financial management
4. Driving (it is better to start young, see Finland)
5. Surviving outdoors (you never know when you gonna need it)
6. Interacting face-to-face
7. Objective thinking (so that they won't fall into sound-bites of politicians)
I do not foresee "coding" will help anyone in the broader spectrum. Perhaps, it can liberate few talented coders who would've gone to another field. Other than you enter into an STEM career; quite unlikely "coding" will help you survive.
Something peripheral: "coding" projects will only succeed because of other skills i.e planning, team work, communication etc; not because of your "coding" skills it self.
They may be happier but it does them zilch when it comes to employers. After all, that is all school is. The front line filter for human resources to weed out who gets hired and who doesn't. Without that sheepskin from an accredited university, you aren't going to get the job. Period... End of line.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Education is about learning to learn and making citizens.
That means learning to think and having enough basics so you don't have to start with the stone age to learn something new.
Reading, writing, and arithmetic are the first on the list.
Self study/research skills, higher math, literature, and basic science are second.
Computer programming seems a vocational skill, might be third at best, but there are many other directions to choose at his level.
The citizenship part is about fitting into the world we live in.
History teaches us how things got to be the way they are.
Government teaches us what tools are in place to adjust them.
These seem necessary to have a functional society, which puts them on par with the second level stuff above.
To add yet another tertiary thing to the first priority list diminishes the things that need to be there.
It gives the education system an excuse for not doing what needs to get done.
It limits our ability to compete with other nations that better understand the role of education.
This is bad for all, but apparently still permits the folks it shapes to fit in.
Given this, the Congress seems a not-so-shining example.
It's computer programming. "Science" would imply that you know how the computer works. You have to know physics, basic electricity and somewhat advanced mathematics (at the very least logic tables). Otherwise you're just a key puncher, doing rote work.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
By pandering to a minority of corporations, the Dpt. of Ed. is converting the US education system into a training programmes for idiot workers in dead-end jobs that'll soon be off-shored to subcontractors in developing countries with lower operating costs. The real advantage that the USA has is an excellent education system* that cultivates independent, critical, and creative thinkers who can then go on to learn just about anything they want and make excellent team-workers, project managers, and problem solvers.
*If you control for poverty, which is the biggest issue in US educational outcomes, the US consistently scores at the top of international tables but doesn't suffer as much from the negative effects of test-oriented curricula, despite the Dpt. of Ed.'s best efforts in the last decade or so.
I've worked with enough developers, and fixed their mistakes, to know that while getting all of these people writing scripts is going to be a pain the real problem (and cost to society) is bad developers. I was on the maintenance team at a government department that had a development group with about 10 people. The best person had to rewrite a C app, which they had originally created, into Java. When we got the app for testing, we also did the admin work for the production apps, it was missing a major feature which he forgot about. The head designer of the group claimed that having a content management system generating an HTML page every time it was requested was a much simpler design than generating it once when the content changes and pushing it to a web server. This despite the page would be exactly the same in both cases and the later case would serve pages faster with less resources. Of course this is the group that thought that serving graphics from a application server was a good idea and to transfer images from one site to another put them into an Oracle database and replicated that.
They are not going to teach computer science. It will be a glorified typing class.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The idea that you can even teach coding in classrooms where students continue to fail basic literacy, let alone mathematics, is absurd. Fix the core curriculum first before adding more certain failure.