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Chicago Public Schools Make Computer Science a Requirement For a HS Diploma
theodp writes: Less than 48 hours after the Chicago Public Schools hosted a three-hour "soiree" at Google's brand-new Chicago HQ, the CPS Board of Education voted unanimously to make computer science a graduation requirement for all high school students in the nation's third largest school district. Starting with next school year's freshman class, CPS students will be required to complete curriculum around computer science before graduating. "Requiring computer science as a core requirement will ensure that our graduates are proficient in the language of the 21st century so that they can compete for the jobs of the future," said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. CPS is working with tech bankrolled and led Code.org and other organizations to further develop a CS education curriculum to implement across all its high schools. Nationwide, President Obama has a $4B proposal on the table to bring CS education to all K-12 schools across the nation, which is also spurring action at the state level, Officials from Code.org, Microsoft and Google joined Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee at the National Governors Association winter meeting in Washington D.C. on Sunday to kick off a new partnership aimed at promoting CS. The new GovsForCS website notes that the Governors will be relying on Code.org for advice, explaining that the nonprofit "will provide the Partnership with resources related to best practices in policy and programs, and will facilitate collaboration among Governors and their staff, in person and virtually."
Will they deny diploma to people who cannot comprehend the CS fundamentals... or will they water CS fundamentals to mean ability to type "Quick Fox" et al?
Computers are becoming more and more irrelevant. I use mostly mechanical typewriters now.
Most people now are refusing to even carry a cellphone.
The future is analog.
The problem with this is that Computer Science will likely go though another paradigm shift within the next decade. Never mind what ALM the MBA's will be spouting in 10 years. But maths and English will likely be the same.
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When I was a Senior in High School (1996), I already had 2 computers and a BBS, surprisingly when a teacher asked the class who had a computer at home only myself and one other student did. The teacher was trying to make the class realize that computers were going to be critical to their future careers but it largely fell on deaf ears. The only mandatory computer "training" the school required of students was for them to write an English paper using WordPerfect in the computer lab. Most students wrote the majority of their papers either with pen and paper or using a typewriter. Some would use a computer in the library to type and print out their reports but only a few did. While going to college over the next 3 years things quickly progressed to the point that one student was asking if she could bring her laptop into the classroom to type notes and the students having a fit about the "loud typing" distracting them.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Chicago public schools have a graduation rate of below 70%. They'd be better off making sure their students had a grasp of fundamental skills than adding additional CS requirements to graduation.
[Insert pithy quote here]
They will go away in a few years.
Besides Human Resouces being ruled by skunk head fools trying to get a cock instead of hiring people, they only hire pople who are actually studying, but how will I study if I don't have money???
How much is Google making charging the schools for textbooks and other teaching materials off this?
Has anyone ever seen these High School 'comp sci' classes? They are a joke and are nothing more, for the most part, how to use Office and maybe some trivial VB.
I doubt any public school teacher in Chicago has the ability to teach anything to anyone...... as the stats seem to back me up.
Basically this is a license payment scheme for a few corps for *cough cough* teaching materials *cough cough* and some kickback money (it IS Chicago)
Of teaching every kid how to create clothing or service cars because everyone wears them or uses them. Few people in the population need to know how to code. How does knowing how to code help a receptionist, janitor, carpenter, farmer, CEO, middle manager, accountant, marketing person, lawyer, doctor, vet? Its simple it doesn't. Chicago should be punished by not getting federal funds for education as this is a gigantic waste of money and resources. Teaching everyone about music, art, history and the basics of sciences and math has way more value than teaching everyone how to code.
It's pretty racist of you to suggest that the white and Asian minority students can't handle computer science. Just because they're in the minority it doesn't mean that they're less-capable than their peers!
Why bother teaching American children the skills that will more and more be shipped off to India and China (or Indians and Chinese brought in to do the work locally)? At that point they will have zero useful skills because you rammed a skill down their throats that will be more or less irrelevant on US soil in a decade.
You might as well be teaching them how to shoe horses for the all use that those skills will be.
If we only followed Chicago's example of progressive government for the people and by the people, we would have eliminated inequality, police violence, high homicide rates, failing schools, and corruption across the nation long ago! Why can't people see that???
They're tired of paying middle class wages for code monkeys and the Indians are getting pricy. Plus there's a slim chance American IT will wake up and demand an end to the H1b program. The people pushing this plan for everything. Unlike us IT workers :(
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By the year 2040, Computer Science will be as useful as Steam Engineering is today.
However, Molecular Genetics, Microbiology, Bacteriology, Immunology, Virology, Parasitology, Mycology, Pathology, and Ecology will continue to be of ever growing importance.
You don't need to understand code to be able to use computers and run software, just like you don't need to be proficient in forging steel to be able to swing a hammer. You should know enough about the process used to make your tools to understand their strengths and weaknesses, but I don't think that's what anyone would get out of these required classes. It certainly won't do much to help the students compete for jobs as they say, unless those jobs are teaching introductory computer science to high school students. What students desperately need in order to compete are critical thinking skills that can be applied to any discipline, but those should already be developed through the existing curriculum. This is nothing more than a quick fix using whatever is trendy at the time.
What the hell's the matter with your country? Your government should be mandating useful skills, like welding, plumbing, etc. 0.000000345345% of people educated in CS will actually get jobs where CS will be even remotely useful. Yet plumber, welders, etc are, and will be, in more demand. Might as well mandate home ec. Jesus.
I went to high school in the 1980s, with pterodactyls and saber-tooth tigers everywhere. We had a "ISI" course that included working with DOS and LOGO. Sure, lame, but if you had never touched a computer before it was good. Of course, I had a C64 at home and was a big annoying PITA to the teacher by constantly telling him my C64 could do the same things too!
It doesnt't really matter when students can't read, write, or do math, they won't be able to understand coding any better than anything else. In the three states I've lived in over the past four years, college sophomores struggle to put together paragraphs and do simple multiplication. Without basic skills, students are pretty much helpless in any endeavor, and those basic skills are being swept away by reformers seeking bigger private profits. Shoot, passing the SAT and ACT is becoming optional, and no one wants to give failing grades in class so as not to lose tuition money. We are literally creating an ignorant slave class.
An aside: it turns out at least part of the reason American students are incurring so much debt is because it is taking them five or six years to complete a basic bachelor's degree. It was four years or less for previous generations, and they managed to do it while working day jobs. There is blame to go around - government, corporate america, parents, students. It is a disaster in the making.
Think of how many people are terrified of math, and struggle with basic arithmetic. Now they're going to make these people take an intro to programming course. They will hate computers as much as they hate math.
Maybe Chicago schools should focus on literacy and arithmetic before they start requiring everyone to program.
So all this learning to code nonsense and saturating the market, driving down prices is sure to backfire in google/facebook/microsoft's face when a young prodigy goes on to start a competing business. Or a young prodigy goes on to hack the next big microsoft/google product and release it to the public.
They would focus on math more. In particular, they would focus on financial math. In this class, they would be taught why credit cards are not doing them any favors. How compound interest works, how to create a budget you will actually follow. How to estimate your expenses. What the local cost of living index is, and why they should look it up for an area they want to work in. What a ROI is, and if certain fields of education have, on average, a good ROI for the education they require.
That would help ensure they are competitive in the workplace.
not
int main (){
cout "Hellow World";
return 0;
}
Because knowing it works won't do anyone any favors. Know HOW it works might help - but will probably be out of the scope of any HS level class.
"...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive...it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."
Or any major field of science like Biology, Chemistry, etc;
Calculus?
"Oh, not all students are smart enough to handle those subjects."
But they're smart enough for Computer Science? Do students really need to know how to design a new sorting algorithm? Understand what O(n) means (oops, there's that advanced math again...) Or does "computer science" mean learning them thar kids to program and make purty web pages. That's fine but that's a TRADE skill, not a SCIENCE skill just like industrial design, typesetting and auto-mechanics.
In ancient times, when I was a compsci major, Computer Science meant stuff like "Analysis of Algorithms."
As I understand it, today Comp Sci 101 might be learning MS-Office.
Programming also seems to have a different meaning. I am not sure that clicking on something, to change the color of a cartoon cat, is what I would call "programming." It may help with learning to use a computer, but not really programming.
Neat-o. My (public) high school required it too.
I graduated in 1995.
Color me unimpressed.
This is the school system where less than 25% of high school graduates exit in a college-ready state. And even then, most of those need remedial courses.
And they want to start teaching CS?
So, what? They're going to dumb it down to the "Magic Smoke" principle?
CPS has MORE than enough problems as it is. Shoddy funding. Shoddy teachers (though not all of them are shoddy by any means). Shoddy facilities.
They can barely teach reading, writing and arithmetic!
This is basically a waste of time, money, and these childrens' educational opportunities.
All so someone can grab some headlines...
Oh wait, that's Chicago! Who cares what it is, so long as it grabs headlines!
What a joke.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
What is important in CS is the unchanging core: logic & algorithms. Kids need to understand logical thinking and step-by-step problem solving.
Oh, and one more thing: documentation. Kids need to be able to explain to others what they've done.
Get that right; all the rest is window dressing.
I thought that an intro to computers class was a state requirement in Illinois. I had this as a high school sophomore back in the 1980s. It was just a nine-week class that covered BASIC programming on TRS-80 computers.
Yet most of these kids will graduate semi-literate and lack any real critical thinking skills... but hey they write "hello world" in java. What a damn disservice. We are dumbing everyone down to make longer bucket lists.
Many posters here are asking what "use" the curriculum could reasonably be expected to have for the students. They are taking the wrong perspective.
As with math classes, chemistry classes, and even literature classes, the point of this would be to have students graduate with a general awareness of how the world works. Those who need a professional level of understanding will almost all enjoy deeper subject material in college.
Here on Slashdot, we often bemoan how the average citizen is uninformed about security, how business managers don't understand why some problems are hard (http://xkcd.com/1425/), and what sorts of things coders need to think about. A class like this is aimed at mitigating those problems.
Have gnu, will travel.
Fully 1/2 their graduates cannot read or write.
The last thing I would want to major in is CS.
Not because I hate computers or the prospect of programming.
I see a glut of programmers and a huge deficiency of jobs in the future work environment. As such, wages and the work environment are going to crash.
As others have stated, the public education system is pumping out people who cannot even perform basic math and have rudimentary English skills.
If they cannot grasp even the basics, how are they ever going to obtain computer science skills.
Chicago is what many would call another failed city. Chicago has huge problems. Someone is shot in Chicago every three hours. They have numerous youth who need to be taught to use a knife and fork, not to shoot or stab others, and hopefully not to stick needles full of dope in their veins. For so many students, they are lucky to be potty trained before leaving high school. It is nice to provide computer science for human students but it will only further the vast rebellion - drop out rate, of the lesser mortals in their schools.
Either they're going to have to set the bar really low, or their graduation rates are going to plummet. Some people just aren't that good at algorithmic thinking.
Computer literacy I understand, buy why is computer science required? Thats like saying everyone needs architecture training so they can be carpenters.
Zero... Why train _everyone_ when doing so will make the skill worthless even for the people who are interested and do learn something?
"Computer Science" is defined as "Using Microsoft Word"
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If my grandpa didn't need to know about computers, then why do my kids?
Oh probably because we educated grandpa to work in coal mines and we don't really want our kids to work in coal mines. Okay, carry on then.
That is just stupid. Basic skills sure. Schools are under pressure to do a ton of crap that splits their focus. Now add one more to the list.
The best method that I had previously heard for this was to replace trigonometry with a programming class. This would allow students to first understand solving equations in algebra or possibly algebra 2 then study a simple programming language ( Python would be the best one at the moment in my opinion). And programming would teach more complex equation solving skills. But most previous opinions that I have heard on this say it would be an optional replacement for trigonometry.
This just seems stupid to mandate that everyone learn to program when some people will just not be able to understand it. I ran into folks who wanted to be CS majors in my first programming class in college and they failed that really easy programming class. If there are people who think they can learn to program and later find out they can't, why would you mandate that everyone take a programming class.
Most adults don't even use higher math. John Oliver says so in a back to school web episode, but he's the only example I have in memory. Computer programming will be used by even less people, so it should not be a requirement.
Let me preface this with the fact that school taxes are already overwhelming so any reply based on the premise "increase the school tax" is not acceptable.
How are schools going to acquire computers without increasing school taxes? Donation of used computers? Due to industry theft concerns, few corporations donate their used computers anymore. Donation of new computers? This would be a HUGE incentive for Micro$oft to brainwash a nation of impressionable high school graduates into the Windows-centric world by donating computers with Windows pre-installed, using contracts to lock out competing OS (which they have done before). Which leads to the next question...
Will the curriculum be general or will it be central to one operating system? If it is the latter then calling it CS is a stretch. Employers will be no more anxious to hire HS graduates from Chicago any more than they would hire MSCE graduates.
This requirement will require hiring IT support staff. Besides the inevitable increase in taxes to support the staff, public schools are notorious for their low wages. How many college IT graduates are anxious to work for a pittance?
On that note, how many CS graduates are anxious to work for the pittance wages of public schools as teachers?
When (not if) those computers suffer a malware attack through an infected thumbdrive, malicious email or download, or network attack who is going to repair all those computers? The single IT support person allocated per school? Disaster waiting to happen.
Will labs be available for computer work outside the classroom? If students have to complete computer homework at home, who will supply computers to the poor who cannot afford them? Public assistance cannot be used for computers. And for the families who don't meet the threshold of public assistance and still are not able to afford computers, they are not going to be very happy about that.
It is blatantly obvious that the people behind that decision had put little thought into this requirement.
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It takes good teachers to make a program successful. Is there even such thing as CS Education being taught as a degree program? Who will teach the material? Ex-programmers? Media Specialists? My point is that no matter how much it is or isn't needed, it will be doomed to failure because there will be huge disparity in how it is taught. Even with the same course material. Much like the wow factor when seeing sodium react to water, exposing kids to a subject such as programming will need to be done in a way that is very engaging and captivating. Not making a computer display "hello world" but with something like Lego Mindstorm so that kids see a physical object being manipulated by their "code." It could be successful and interesting, but it will take some very "outside the box" thinking to have proper absorption by kids.
Best post on the thread.
As they're at it, why not make general medicine a requirement for a high school diploma? I mean, isn't the purpose to flood a high paying job market with more qualified personnel?
I think it's a mistake to require students to take particular courses. By the time you get to high school the focus should be on preparing students for the skills they'll need to succeed in whichever direction they're leaning. That might be a very broad thing. One might take more science/math than english/art/design, but none-the-less.
For instance I'd have taken many more computer science classes in high school and less classes in other areas (I'd have skipped the art/design/physical ed./etc). Some might value physical education, but I don't and the state shouldn't be able to utilize violence on me if I don't participate. You might argue that you don't have to comply, but in reality most students do because the alternative is not available as a result of governments stealing ones dollars to spend on public education. There was zero chance I'd ever utilize a class in architecture and design (ie AutoCad). However there were restrictions on the CS classes so I couldn't take the real CS classes until my later years and then there were only 3 CS classes available to take (and two programming classes). This was 1999-2003 at a large high school with significant funding- one of the "best" in the country.
The problem with programmers and computer science people is that you are in too high demand and too expensive. Only business people are allowed to require such high wages. Engineers, etc. are supposed to be the new working class. By flooding the market with people trained to do what you do, you will no longer be unique. Your skills will be so common that a high school kid can do it and therefore your wages will match. Again, only business people and entertainers are allowed a place at the high table of success in the modern era. Only those who inherited wealth or are deemed worthy to become leaders can demand those high salaries. Your high knowledge, skills and critical thinking skills make you a danger to the stability of a well structured society and the society must ensure you are not wealthy enough to make decisions. You tech geeks are getting too big headed, especially with your growing wealth and influence. Learn your place. You are worker bees and should be paid like them. Anyone can and will be able to do your job soon.
If they want to teach computers, how about learning how to use computers like typing, using the Internet, etc.? Computer Science is too much.
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Not necessarily. When I studied CS in school, learning to code was the easy part. I found the theory challenging but the programming languages fairly simple to understand. Learning and implementing algorithms was fun.
Then I got out into the working world, and discovered the real challenge is trying to figure out how other programmers think.
Diving into a complex system or figure out a non-intuitive new framework can be discouraging (and that's putting it charitably).
How many times have you thrown up your hands looking at someone else's bizarre code and cried "this is horseshit!"