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Obama Calls For $4B 'Computer Science For All' Program For K-12 Schools (washingtonpost.com)
Etherwalk writes: President Obama plans to announce a four billion dollar computer science initiative for K-12 schools, where fewer than 15 percent of American high schools offer Advanced Placement (i.e. college 101) Computer Science courses. This is still very much open to negotiation with Congress, because it is part of a budget request from the President. So write your Congressman if you support it. The $4 billion would be doled out over a period of three years to any state that applies for the funds and has a well-designed plan to expand access to computer science courses, especially for girls and minorities.
After all, everybody eats. Not everyone is a programmer.
Good he quits this year.
Not everyone is sufficiently adept at math or intelligent enough to be a computer scientist. Why didn't the President just say, "Neurosurgery for All?" Then everyone could be a neurosurgeon.
I weep for those 4 billions. What good we could have done with it, how many ivory back scratcher could have been bought...
Don't get me wrong. I am all for teaching as many people as possible how to create code for computers. The problem is that very, very few people have the required mindset to do so. Yes, with current RAD tools pretty much anyone can create some kinda code that sorta works. Personally, I call this development "total job security for the foreseeable future".
Why?
Because I'm in Infosec.
The amount of cargo-cult programming is stunning already. And with kids who don't give half a shit about programming, this is going to get worse. Especially when you make those kids think they can when in fact they can't. Remember the old saying: Those who can do, those who can't teach. And now ponder what greatness will come out of this.
No. Sorry. Programming is something you have to want to do if you want to do it right. And let's be blunt here, code that's just plainly WRONG, we already have enough of.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That would make for some funny dinnertime discussions.
It's just a few posts in on this topic, but it's interesting that nobody thinks this is a good idea. Don't get me wrong, I agree with all the posts, because computer programming cannot be shoved down anybody's throat and this $4B won't make everyone a programmer. Those that have the interest will find a way to satisfy that interest. Becoming a good computer programmer is much more than taking a class. It involves night after night of hacking on the keyboard and writing program after program until you're learnt enough that you're valuable. I'm afraid this money will just contribute to the ever-expanding list of people and crappy applications we're seeing on the app stores on our mobile devices. It was just interesting that such initiative would receive such backlash on a site like SD.
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
... to just take that $4 billion, and cut a "bonus" check to every IT worker in America.
The problem isn't that women don't know how to program as well as men, it's that the field just isn't as attractive to them. Woman tend to value job stability over income, and it's hard to find that kind of stability in IT. IT requires a lot of brains, a lot of hard work, isn't very social, has a lot of guys with behavioral issues, and their job might get outsourced to India so the MBA middle manager can get his quarterly bonus and afford some more blow.
IT and the medical field require similar levels of intelligence and work, yet medical jobs don't often get outsourced to China, the demand for medical skills is relatively constant, and while there are behavioral issues, they usually fall along the Doogie Howser Dipshit Doc/Nurse axis rather than the male/female axis.
Do you want to attract women to IT? The best way to do it would be to change it in ways which also make it more attractive to men too: 40 hour work weeks, reasonable pay for the work/brainpower involved, job security, etc.
If you want to fix public education... you have to fire the incompetent teachers.
No more tenure. No more rubber rooms. No more excuses.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
As long as education in America is deliberately broken with bullshit like common core, overtesting leading kids in the single-digits to lose sleep over school anxiety, and so on, this can only possibly be a handout to certain corporations which will be specially selected in a bullshit process. Obama's legacy is going to be crying crocodile tears about children in this country while blowing them up in other countries.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How about teaching English, Math, Science and such first? US students are in many cases barely able to read and fail miserably at math. Let's get everyone up to a first world level before we worry about computer science for everyone. CS should be an elective.
I fully support this.
Think Tanks: How a Bill [Gates Agenda] Becomes a Law: In 2012, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a forum on STEM education and immigration reforms, where fabricating a crisis was discussed as a strategy to succeed with Microsoft's agenda after earlier lobbying attempts by Bill Gates and Microsoft had failed. "So, Brad [Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith]," asked the Brookings Institution's Darrell West at the event, "you're the only [one] who mentioned this topic of making the problem bigger. So, we galvanize action by really producing a crisis, I take it?" "Yeah," Smith replied (video). And, with the help of nonprofit organizations like Code.org and FWD.us that were founded shortly thereafter, a national K-12 CS and tech immigration crisis was indeed created.
Microsoft supports White House initiative to expand access to computer science: " Microsoft is one of many companies in the tech sector that is committed to this effort [said Microsoft President Brad Smith]. In addition to our business initiatives, those of us who are involved in philanthropy, including such groups as Code.org, will do more. The private sector and philanthropy cannot fill this gap without public funding. And if we're going to accelerate progress as a nation, we need federal funding. That's why today's proposal is so important. It can provide the accelerant to help more states and school districts progress more quickly."
" So write your Congressman if you support it. "
Also, write your Congressman if you don't support it.
Before you get out of office.
Do they mean coding (AP computer science)? The higher-level design stuff? System administration? Information security? The article mentioned AP Computer Science, so we'll be the world's leader in Java programming.
Also, the benefit might not be employment as a programmer per se, but simply using programs as part of one's day job..
And that will be cause for celebration.
I'm tired of Obama's idiocy, and I am quite sure I am not the only one.
Having taught programming to middle and high schoolers I can say that this is going to be a big waste of money.
The biggest issue they face is lack of teachers who know programming. Math department? Ha! Business teachers? They have a hard time teaching Office.
If they're able to find qualified teachers or even able to train a math teacher well enough to teach BASIC they run into the next big challenge. The students. I would say the vast majority of kids, even at high school level, do not have adequate math or reading skills to program. Essentially the classes with these kids become mimicking. Write what I write on the board. Here is your project, change the words around.
So really this is focused on Honors Students and smarter. While better overall kids, many of them will struggle due to lack of proper teachers in the field and for the fact they have spent their entire student life solving formulas rather than creating formulas to solve problems.
The school I taught at only had one programming class, so I can't judge retention rates. Only one of my students out of 300 or so went on (afaik) to study programming in college. Which brings me back to my highschool days way back in 2004. It was a large school with a student body of over 6,000. So we had programming classes at three different levels. 1st year would have about 120 students. 2-year had 12 students. And the 3-year level class had me and one other guy... (No AP classes however, as you can see most people dropped the subject so it would be pointless for the school to pay for AP.) Programming is hard, and very few who wouldn't already gravitate toward the field is going to try to do it.
This doesn't even touch on the issue of the federal government poking it's nose in local and state government issues. Education decisions and budget should be as close to the parents as possible. So they can influence it the best they see fit.
Step 1) Take money from states' citizens under threat of violence.
Step 2) Only give it back if those states promise to use it in the manner demanded by the federal government.
And because the SCOTUS doesn't admit any limitations on the reasons or extent of federal taxation, the feds can get whatever they want via taxation.
and highly profitable for businesses. Teaching cooking is expensive (ovens, cooking supplies, etc) and only moderately profitable (I don't count Fast Food as "cooking").
The cynic in me wants to say this is just another way to depress tech wages so long as we're not shutting down the H1-B prog. The even more cynic in me says this is the only way Obama could get anyone to agree to fund education in this god-forsaken country after 30 years of tax cuts and tax havens for the 1%.
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they're making rank and file coders who can crank out VB apps. Anyone with a decent education can do that, and if you think otherwise you're just lying to yourself. Yes, the code won't be as pretty as yours, but it'll work (mostly). Plus thanks to all the extra competition for jobs those new programmers will work an extra 20 hours a week for free fixing the bugs their weaker skills create. What else can they do? There are no blue collar jobs in this country because white collar voters keep putting right-wing anti-tariff politicians in office....
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So write your Congressman if you support it.
You should write your Congressman especially if you don't support it.
That is what Obama is. No matter how much good he would like to do for every day Americans, his way is blocked by those that would profit by his demise.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
THere are around 50 million students in the states... 4 Billion dollar initiative would bean about 80 per student. Doled out over three years is around 27 dollars per student. I'm sure that the money will be spread equally among all students. So a small school district like the one in which I work would receive about 27,000 dollars.
To teach programming as a k-12 prograpm will require new teachers as all the current teachers are aready teaching their subjects (6-12).
To teach programming as a K-12 program will either increase the school day's instructional time or decrease from current content.
What will primary teachers do? take a workshop-class on programming? Teachers are already overloaded.
In Illinois, teachers hired withing the last few years now have to teach until they are 67. I am one of the few (only?) in my district that could teach some coding... I actually use RPG Maker in my English classes to teach participatory narrative and scripting... I also help other teachers how to check their email and turn on their computers...
What I'm getting at is the educational system is broken for this kind of thing. THrowing 4 billion dollars to administrators is just going to increase the workload on an already overburdened teaching population.
And getting a programmer to come in and teach is not going to work. To get a programmer who has never had any training in teaching to teach a classroom full of twelve year old kids is going to be "interesting." And why would someone skilled in programming want to teach? It is totally not worth the pay cut... A deian programmer pay is $86K while Median teacher salary is $58K. Maybe I'm wrong. There may be a horde of programmers out there that would teach just for the love of working with children. I'm a teacher after all.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
Well this sounds all fine and dandy to Obama's useful idiot brownshirts, but where exactly does he and his Marxist minions expect this money to come from? Obama has single-handedly put this country further in debt than every other President COMBINED - borrowing money that our Children and grandchildren will have to pay back.
We already have math for all, which is of course good. But we do not have AP calculus for all, or at least not in some enforced manner, which is also good and very practical. If states approach this in a sane and practical manner, this could be good. A comprehensive but still basic computer literacy would be good. But we can't teach skills that will be utterly obsolete by the time they graduate. Instead of teaching kids the basics in the form of WIndows 10, teach them fundamental concepts as viewed through the history of computing. Want girls to get interested in taking future optional programming courses? Teach them about Ada Lovelace and her legacy. But please don't dump programming on a bunch of kids, which some are trying. The teachers don't understand it and some of the methods are misleading.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Much more important to make kids productive for their future professional life and offload the costs of formation from companies.
What education is good for anyway?
Socializing, diminishing prejudice, critical thinking...
Who needs that?
Let's eradicate trolls at the kindergarten by learning them to think correctly that their destiny is solely to be future workers.
You cannot solve this problem by flooding schools with money.
This could be excellent if -
1. All the funds went to the public school sector (not private schools)
2. Ubuntu was the primary supported OS
3. Only Open Source Software was used in the program
However -
1. There are almost no qualified teachers
2. Apple and Microsoft will view this as the subsidy it is
3. Poor schools can't even provide a basic education today
Then again -
Anything makes more sense than spending 10 Billion a year on missile defense.
Just missing a tie in to 3d printers and graphene...
On the one hand, low-grade unskilled programming is a job that will be automated out of existence soon enough, so promoting this as "jobs for the new economy" strategy is misguided.
On the other hand, introducing things like "logic" and "arithmetic" and "logic + arithmetic" into the thinking of the average American cannot be a bad idea.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Bill Gates has been trying to unseat Apple grip on the education market for decades. You might as well read this as Gov't pays Microsoft $4B to put Windows into every school and a tablet in every home.
As someone whom took honors Computer Science class, it had about 15? people, out of a school of about 2,000 people. There were a couple of RPG geeks, whom did well, and got into Caltech. There were some gaming enthusiasts. This was at a white, upper class school too. Those RPG geeks won awards at some academic competition. The school by and large ignored. The football team won a certain game, and people noticed. So, I agree. Your typical school should not have a computer science class.
very, very few people have the required mindset to [create code]
While there's some truth to this, the self-congratulatory attitude that comes with it has ruined the entire field.
Prior to the 90's, programming was about solving problems, and a good solution was a simple solution. Then soccer moms entered the field and programmers didn't feel so special anymore. (Exaggerating only slightly) They responded by making everything as complex as possible, and turned from problem solving to learning minutiae, so that only autistic people want to do the job, and now they can call themselves specially suited...because they made it that way. Programmers are now so afraid of doing something their peers would disapprove of, for fear of not demonstrating the minutiae they've learned, that they won't design solutions for themselves. Now they have to have frameworks and use accepted buzzwords that someone else made up to describe techniques someone else created, and they saddle their employers with having to support soon-to-be-obsolete technology that they spend more time getting to work than if they had just solved the damned not-very-complex problem they were given.
I'll never understand the huge money push for computer science for k-12 when kids on average have awful computer literacy. All because a kid knows how to fuck around on the internet doesn't mean they know what a file extension even is.
We need widespread basic computer literacy funding far more.
26 years ago, I was 12 years old, sitting with my 9 year-old sister, on the carpet of our parents' bedroom, watching tvision via UHF -- how's that for dating myself?
A commercial came on, for what I do not recall, and as with nearly ALL commercials back then, it ended with a big giant telephone number. But unlike most, it had a small domain name beneath. I turned to my baby-sister and said "look sis', one day that domain name will be bigger than the telephone number".
A year later, I had started my web development business. Today, I'm happy, successful, completely self-taught, and all is good.
Obama's way too late. If school children today begin to learn to program, in twenty years from now, they'll be the perfect blue-collar drones that pick tomatoes today.
So you live in a country that's immigrating vast numbers of people from china and india, and you want to focus your children on programming 26 years too late.
Instead, why not notice that your country was built on manufacturing, and now you've got no one left to do the "unskilled" jobs, you know, the ones that no one knows how to do anymore. Like the brick-laying, that is probably the highest-paying job in the whole of the U.S.A. -- considering education costs of course. I think you're paying $80/hour for brick laying these days?
Like calculus. Not everyone cares to go that far, rightfully, but those with aninterest should have access. The administration still have misguided notions of homogeny guiding everything they do, and that just isn't applicable to a species with free will. No, not everyone is a cook, even having taken home ec. Not everyone is a mechanic even after taking shop. So it shall always be with every subject. The obama administration gets more dictatorial all the time, so glad he's almost done.
What's the point of encouraging Americans to go into Computer Science when the government will just allow companies to replace them with cheap H1-B visa later? Teach Americans to be project managers, sorry "scrum masters", so that they can spend their time bossing around the H1-B visa labor and then trying to explain to middle management why the super cheap labor can't produce quality software.
It is more useful in more fields, and would be good for the democracy.
When I saw this headline, I figured that the readers here on slashdot would trip over each other to declare this to be an awful idea. They come up with all kinds of contorted excuses, but I would wager that the true underlying reason for their disapproval has nothing to do with anything but the fact that Obama is a democrat. Simply for being a democrat, Obama has only a marginally higher approval rating on slashdot than the Ebola Virus or ISIS.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Both programs are about increasing the size of the labor pool to lower costs for corporations. Nothing more, nothing less.
So we agree that farm laborers might not need to know how to program computers. Most people don't need that information, and it doesn't apply well to any other area of interest.
But there is something that can benefit everyone including future programmers.
Logic. Real logic, not that soft stuff mentioned to high school or jr college students. Real logic is a form of algebra and uses algebra type symbols to analyze constructs of language and reasoning. It may be offered as a class for philosophy majors in better universities, but there is no reason that a fifth grade boy or girl wouldn't love discovering things with it.
I have enjoyed it all my life as a means to confuse and devastate my enemies with statements of exquisite illogic against which there is no argument for the uninformed. Likewise it is good training for politicians who wish to appear to say things that voters want to hear. Logic is the only protection against manipulation by them or other evangelists. Which is probably why politicians want us to learn programming instead.
...omphaloskepsis often...
#1- Who is going to pay for the $4B?
#2- What problem is this supposed to fix?
#3- Since when is throwing random money at a problem an actually solution?
Not against the idea of teaching kids CS courses. What I'm against is the total waste of tax payer money on useless programs while not addressing real problems.
Even as a big supporter of CS in Education I can't see any value for the K-6 range. I think that CS should come before algebra, but it's pretty pointless to come before arithmetic. Middle school is the time to introduce CS/Programming to students.
What do they mean, computer science? Learning to use Word and Excel is no computer science, but generating business for Microsoft. Learning to use a GUI is not computer science, and kids already learn that spontaneously with their phones and tablets. Learning to code is not computer science, but investing in code monkeys. So, what are they going to teach? Computability theory? P vs. NP? Automata theory? Completeness? Compiler design? OS design?
This whole thing is ridiculous. The vast majority out there do not have what it takes for, and couldn't care less about, computer science. With reason - computer science is a specialized branch of advanced mathematics, which not everybody can tackle. Any benefits in the way of the development of logical thinking and discipline they are already getting (or should be getting, if taught properly) from mathematics. Aiming to tech computer science in high school and below is a ridiculous goal.
I teach what Tennessee calls the IT Pathway. I am a Career and Technical Education teacher at a public high school, and we teach students to get A+ and Network+ certified. Why do we have to push students into just programming, when their are employment gaps in other areas? Nashville is projected to have over 120,000 IT jobs in the next four years, and we have no one to fill them as students are not even given the opportunity to study this material until after they finish high school normally (and they also usually have to find out about these certifications on their own). Come on, DC, let's be more broad-minded about this.
if you buy beans and rice and eat only that (and a vit-b1 supplement) then yes. But other than that eating off dollar menus is, dollar per calorie, still cheaper. It'll kill you in your 40s, but then again if you're eating off dollar menus for a living you probably don't have much chances anyway. You could also try living off cheap bread you make yourself, but that _will_ kill you from malnutrition. Cheap flour is genuinely bad for you.
I've been eating clean and cooking my own means for about 3 months now here in Phoenix, Az. It's about $400/mo per person to do so. That sounds like a lot until you realize it's $4.44 cents a meal. I could switch to the beans/rice diet, but that's not exactly good for you either, you'll just (mostly) survive. Oh, and I'm running a caloric deficit because I'm losing weight and using Costco to buy things in bulk to hit that $4.44/meal (I'm not factoring in the Costco membership in that because the credit card rewards balance that out at the end of the year).
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We need better programmers, not more of them. Too many monkeys slinging stinky bits around. We need more doctors, nurses, and other health professionals.
Jesse Jackson and the other self-appointed civil rights leaders have begun to complain that the big tech companies do not hire many blacks or hispanics. Normally the Democrats would use this opportunity to shame and browbeat the industry into complying with the demands of the SJWs. Unfortunately, the tech companies donate large sums of money primarily to the Democrats and they have made it clear that they will not tolerate this sort of meddling in their operations. So Obama has decided instead to spend large sums of the taxpayers' money to "fix" the problem The tech companies get a pass on diversity just like they get a pass on paying taxes.
Even as a big supporter of CS in Education I can't see any value for the K-6 range. I think that CS should come before algebra, but it's pretty pointless to come before arithmetic. Middle school is the time to introduce CS/Programming to students.
We had a computer in the corner in my 4th grade classroom. I wrote an IF dungeon game, albeit in BASIC. I had played with it at home before, but there were other kids who had never been exposed to it. As a class, we were working on things including speed multiplying and fractions.
It turns out you can have fun programming before 6th grade, even if it's really simple programming.
I dont need to spend years of seat time in front of a computer,
to be offered 9.00 an hour.
And 44,000 a year after decades.
Just give me free. I dont need certs MCSE CCNA, I mean unless you pay for them for me.
This is why the Dems will be Trumped.
This has absolutely nothing to do with making a job environment more competitive for kids in the future. This is designed to increase tech labor supply so that wages can be kept down since it'll be a hiring managers market. There's obviously big money behind this, so thinking this is for the benefit of anyone other than the already wealthy - who cling tight to the belief that they stand to lose more profitability from higher wages - is just lying to yourself.
Saying that computer science is as important as reading, writing and arithmetic is ludicrous and an appeal to ignorance. It's hard to live if you can't read or write, it's pretty darn easy to live without knowing computer science. Did you see the article about Ford paying it's UAW workers a $9,300 bonus this year? How many of them do you think know computer science? Ford only made a $7bn profit, yet they can afford to pay out about half of that as profit sharing to employees? That makes just about every other company look like cheapskates in the process.
The solution is for Colleges to cound C++, JAVA, PHP, etc. as a Foreign Language for college admission, So you could take it in place of Spanish or Latin, etc.
I work for a private College Prep School and the high school Curriculum is basically dictated by College admission requirements, other than electives which are there mostly to boost GPA's and should be cost efficient.
Hiring a teacher to teach programming if they aren't already covering other subjects is cost prohibitive.
But if programming languages counted for the foreign language requirements, it would allow Technical people who are interested in programming a way to get their foreign language requirements taken care of while learning useful skills that would be applicable to future college courses.
Hey, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Facebook, Amazon!
Pork barrel ahead!
nothing this president does is "for all". there is nothing stopping children from getting interested in any particular field. why this focus on getting people with certain genetic makups into certain fields. why is no one clamoring about getting more asians into italian culinary programs? how about we focus on getting the best and the brightest so we can compete globally instead if producing an army of crappy programmers? how about we teach kids well in all subjects so they can choose what interests them?
What about free medical school for all?
Lets lower the cost of medicine!!
You guys are not paying attention to the man behind the curtain. Follow the money. The purpose of this is not to teach computing, it is to give money to some particular constituency. Maybe it's teachers, maybe it's black people, maybe it's hispanics, maybe it's hardware mfrs, or maybe it's some combination, but you can be certain that some constituency has been identified and then a rationale has been devised to send them money. The chances that the money will be spent in a useful way are slim to none, because schools rarely find useful ways to spend free money.
Given the sorry state of governance in this country, from the federal government to the smallest local civic associations, the money would certainly be better spent teaching something really boring, such as civics, history, or government. You got the best government money can buy baby.