White House Expected To Announce Big Computer Science Push

theodp writes: Politico reports that the White House is talking to groups about a push for computer science education in the coming weeks, possibly in mid-January, which could involve commitments from outside groups or companies. Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi recently credited a 2013 push from the White House for inspiring Code.org to dream up and team up with Big Tech on the wildly-successful Hour of Code, an event that brought teachers, schools, computer scientist volunteers, and other organizations together with the goal of bringing hands-on CS learning to 10 million K-12 students. Coincidentally, the Hour of Code event bears more than a passing similarity to the less-successful and now-abandoned National Lab Day (school flyer), an annual event announced by President Obama in 2009 that brought teachers, schools, computer scientist volunteers, and other organizations together with the goal of bringing hands-on STEM learning to 10 million K-12 students.

Comments

This is the best distraction they can imagine?

[drinkypoo]

Normally, when you want a distraction from the fact that you've got an ongoing murder program, you make announcements that people will care about as your handwaving tactic. Who gives a shit about this? The existing coders are going wanting for jobs because of the mismanagement of the H1-B program. What benefit is there to kids to going into programming right now? Do we really need more fart apps?

Enough of this

[JWW]

I find it condescending and somewhat cruel the focus the politicians are putting on coding and programming. With ageism rampant in the field and large number of workers being forced out of their jobs while being insulted with the mandate to train their replacements, these actions are a slap in the face to everyone already in the field.

The powers that be are striving to make everything cheap ass manufacturing style work. That's what they're really getting at here. Big business thinks that all workers are too expensive if they make over minimum wage. This is just an effort to flood the market with cheap (and in the end poorly trained) labor. In addition to that if they don't train enough people to crash the labor market ( and thus the pay ) they'll import as much as is needed to do so.

Our political class, both sides, doesn't give a single fuck about any citizens in this country. They don't do a single goddammed thing that is good for the people. Every fucking action helps Wall Street or some big corporation or some powerful organization or "charity" that is only really a slush fund for connected wealthy elites.

This is all just hand waving and bullshit to keep us from realizing we're continually being sold down the river.

Re:Enough of this

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I find it condescending and somewhat cruel the focus the politicians are putting on coding and programming.

Politicians don't understand what programming is. They think it is a simple skill like reading and writing. Everybody can learn to read an write. Not everyone can learn how to program. But the politicians would like to say that they are doing something about the lack of STEM skills in the US.

Before I started with BASIC and FORTRAN IV ten thousand years ago . . . do you want to know how I learned programming?

Playing logic games with my father, in the car on long trips . . . like "Twenty Questions" . . . that's what taught me how to program.