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The President Wants Every Student To Learn CS. How Would That Work? (npr.org)

Posted by Soulskill on from the say-hi-to-your-new-teacher:-Mr.-Stack-Overflow dept.

theodp writes: The very first proposal President Obama put forth in his final State of the Union address Tuesday night for his remaining year in office was "helping students learn to write computer code." While the President wants every student to learn CS, NPR notes that getting a new, complex, technical subject onto the agendas of our public schools is a massive challenge, prompting it to ask, How Would That Work? That Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella attended the SOTU address as Michelle Obama's guest suggests the President is counting on the kindness of tech titans to help make things happen. Microsoft and Obama have worked together to try to get CS in the schools since at least 2006, when Microsoft announced a $1 million donation to NCWIT, which it indicated would facilitate "taking the discussion to a national stage" at a Washington, D.C. Innovation and Diversity Town Hall co-sponsored by the NSF and keynoted by then-Senator Barack Obama. "Most of all, what inspires me about this program [NCWIT] are the prospects of my two daughters," Obama said at the time (video). "I want them to go as far as their dreams may take them. And, unfortunately because of long historic discrimination in the areas of gender, we can't be assured of that."

6 of 317 comments (clear)

  1. How would that work? by jafiwam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It wouldn't.

    1. Re:How would that work? by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It doesn't have to. Not in the sense that every kid ends up being a competent coder.

      It is good that kids are exposed to coding and learn some of the rudiments. A few kids may be inspired to take up a career in IT, others may derive some benefit from when they take a job that involves computers, and for others still will simply be part of having a well rounded education. The same can be said for biology, poetry, economics or history, by the way.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    2. Re:How would that work? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I knew this guy, an electrical engineer, who wrote Excel macros. Many of them were quite complex and useful. I'm sure he couldn't even tell you what a race condition is, let alone fix one, but fortunately such things never came up because, well, it's an Excel macro written in Visual BASIC. Very useful for doing engineering calculations, converting memory dumps into screenshots, even writing front ends for command line apps to make production staff's lives easier and less error prone.

      I'm an accomplished programmer, mainly using lower level stuff like assembler and C, but also high level stuff like C# and Java. I've done bits of Javascript here and there, for various web projects, mostly personal. Fixing things in MediaWiki, implementing an on-line shop with Google Checkout, some fancy little animated flourishes etc. Never once had to fix a deadlock, lockout or race condition. What I did was relatively simple, sure, but still very useful and productive.

      Not everyone has to be a master in their field to be useful. Simply being able to do Excel macros, i.e. to use the tool you have (a computer) more fully to work more productively, is a skill worth having. Teach the basics and people can apply that skill practically, which is more than you can say for a lot of the shit you learn in school.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Some dreams don't count by MikeRT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "I want them to go as far as their dreams may take them. And, unfortunately because of long historic discrimination in the areas of gender, we can't be assured of that."

    A lot of women also want to be able to be stay at home moms, supported by a husband on a single income. The effect of driving down wages in our field means it's that much harder for any woman married to a man in our field to have that option. What our economic policies mean for a lot of women in general is that should they want to give up their career, they can't, because cheap labor is more important than economic flexibility.

    1. Re:Some dreams don't count by mwvdlee · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The percentage of women in IT (about 26%) is higher than the percentage of women in politics (about 22%).
      Remember that next time a politician claims "a long historic discrimination in the areas of gender".

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  3. This Will Never Happen by StormReaver · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Enough people fail to grasp the concept of a variable that I can confidently predict that the "anyone can code" mentality will hit an unassailable obstacle and be abandoned. The only question is how long it will take for this particular neurosis to metastasise and die.