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Top Silicon Valley Execs and Others Urge Congress To Fund K-12 Computer Science Education (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader shares a TechCrunch report:Some of the biggest names in tech and corporate America, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, have teamed up with governors and educators to ask Congress to provide $250 million in federal funding to school districts in order to give every single K-12 student in the nation an opportunity to learn how to code. On the legislative side, these tech CEOs are joined by governors from both sides, including California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R). Earlier this year, President Barack Obama called for more than $4 billion in funding for states, and $100 million for districts in order to bring computer science curricula to every single K-12 student in the country. What this group of CEOs, governors and educators is asking for today is different. They're saying that this issue can be addressed without growing the federal budget. The petition reads:Not only does computer science provide every student foundational knowledge, it also leads to the highest-paying, fastest-growing jobs in the U.S. economy. There are currently over 500,000 open computing jobs, in every sector, from manufacturing to banking, from agriculture to healthcare, but only 50,000 computer science graduates a year. Whether a student aspires to be a software engineer, or if she just wants a well-rounded education in today's changing world, access to computer science in school is an economic imperative for our nation to remain competitive. And with the growing threat of cyber warfare, this is even a critical matter of national security. Despite this growing need, targeted federal funding to carry out these efforts in classrooms is virtually non-existent. This bipartisan issue can be addressed without growing the federal budget.
Surely those assholes can scrape together a paltry $250 million dollars from their personal piggybank.
The individuals listed could personally pony up $250 million from petty cash. Why ask the government for funding?
Please train our future workforce with someone else's money.
Yours truly,
Rich Silicon Valley Companies
those same companies also beg, lobby and bribe for more h1-b visas.. and not because there currently exists a lack of qualified persons for those jobs
In 20 years our kids wont know cellular mitosis, because the theory of evolution was in such crisis and open to such broad religious interpretation that no state cared to endorse it. Our kids wont understand how to cook a cup of rice or plan a meal because betty crocker shuffled our home economics classes out the door with the sheer brute force of nutritionally bankrupt processed meals in a cardboard box. They wont understand US history because the budget folded it into gym class, which in turn wont be attended because curricula from the sixties hasnt taken into account a predominantly obese student body. These kids wont understand suffixed consonants and proper nouns because its hard to concentrate when the cafeteria is forced to define a french fry as a vegetable portion and pizza sauce as well. And the kids wont know how to wire a doorbell or build a simple circuit because the last known attempt at simple electronics turned into a witchhunt for improvised explosives.
oh but dont worry, theyll all be able to code so long as the OS is windows, the IDE is visual studio, the curriculum centers on industry goals, and the teacher is vetted and approved by an appropriate industry partner. the GPL and BSD kids at the back of the class however will do as they always have: shoot spitballs, trade mp3s, and work on cool projects they like until the bell rings and they can go back to hanging out on irc and pretending they wont spend their senior year expelled for a zero tolerance offense.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Dear Government, Please train more welders. Signed, Ford, GM, FC
Aren't these the same companies that lay off US based workers in favor of H1-Bs? Why train more US workers just so they can be replaced before they can even start?
I must be getting old. I read the headline and think, "Yep, we've seen this before. Next, they'll be pushing secondary education again. And shortly after that, they'll be requesting more H1B visas - you know, like has happened about 3 or 4 times in the past 20 years."
Do you know what the best way is to fuck up a supply based economy? Involve the government.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
While that's a stunning piece of data and sadly true, what do you expect? We let parents dictate what their children should be taught, how their children should be taught and by whom they should be taught. We fail to prepare teachers for the classroom, graduate them with little to no classroom experience, put in place programs to support them and then allow those program to be cut or fail. Students come to school tired, hungry, and are often afraid to walk down the halls for fear of being accosted by fellow students. While I am a true fan of the underlying concept of Common Core, it's implementation is lacking in some areas (and no I'm not referring to how they teach math) we're pushing directed instruction all the way down to pre-K where we know it doesn't work and the high-stakes testing that comes along with Common Core has evolved into a nightmare of wasted time and resources.
They arn't trying to give kids opportunities. They want to saturate the market, at the taxpayers expense, so that they can pay bottom dollar for what amounts to digital Factory Workers.
They want quality developers, but they don't want to pay for them. Yet they keep trying to get it both ways, which is why all these H1B-sucking temp companies are doing so well.
I was thinking the same thing if computer science was taught in k-12 they could be hiring in tech grubs at a dollar or two above minimum wage since every high school graduate would probably have better education than our current tech colleges provides in a 2 year degree.
They want more people in the industry so they can flood the market with labor and lower the pay of their tech employees.
Close. They want to create the perception that more people are desperately needed in the industry so that they can have political cover to import more foreign workers on H1B visas, so they can flood the market with foreign labor and lower the pay of their tech employees.
Using feminine pronouns as though neutral always irks me. Are they implying only females will now want to code? "He" can be a neutral pronoun, "she" cannot.
Between "No child left behind" and no discipline allowed, there is simply no way to teach many students today. And because they are not removed from the classroom, the rest of the kids that still have a chance are prevented from learning. It does not matter what curriculum you pick. If they refuse simple instruction (like take this quiz) there is no hope.
From the article...This group of CEOs, governors and educators is...saying that this issue can be addressed without growing the federal budget..."We’ll use the money to train over 25,000 public school teachers to introduce computer science to students who would otherwise never have this opportunity.”
This group appears to claim that no additional money needs to be spent if we can use the existing teacher workforce to teach computer science. If that's the case, what will those teachers no longer teach? I mean, it's not like teachers are sitting around all day with nothing to do. Should we pull math teachers, and just teach less math? Or maybe the music teachers? We can always teach less music, and I'm sure music teachers will have no troubles learning how to code, right? And certainly these coders will be top quality, having been trained by the best math teachers and music teachers our country has to offer.
I wish government officials could realize one day that there's never an educational initiative that comes without a cost. Training costs money. People cost money. Computers cost money. Electricity costs money. Time costs money. So tell this group of CEOs, governors and educators not to put another single unfunded mandate onto the table until they fund the ones they've been mandating so far.
All these companies bitch for more H1-B visas and then wonder why there aren't any US CS grads lining up? Seriously this is the biggest two-faced bunch of bullshit to come out of Corporate America in awhile.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
The individuals listed could personally pony up $250 million from petty cash. Why ask the government for funding?
They're donating collectively $48M. Think of it as a 1,000,000:1 matching donation - you give $1, they each give $1M or more.
Source (better article than TFA: https://www.washingtonpost.com... )
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
My issue is that you really, really shouldn't be teaching someone to code without teching them general computer literacy. It's a bit like trying to teach someone calculus without teaching them algebra first. Yeah, you might get them to memorize some derivatives, but they won't know how to apply it and they certainly won't have a good grasp of mathematics. Instead, we get an even bigger divide between people who know computers and people who don't, rather than getting more people in the middle. If we had more people in the middle, maybe computers could stop being designed for morons.
because they are not removed from the classroom, the rest of the kids that still have a chance are prevented from learning
It was like this in the 70's and by far (like 100x) the biggest difference hat I noticed between public and private schools. I don't recall a single disruption in my entire (private) high school career and I'm sure if there was one, he offending student would be permanently removed that day. We even had off campus rules of conduct where you could be expelled if a teacher or administrator witnessed you doing something against the rules in a public (non school) place...and there were maybe half a dozen expulsions that I could name over four years.
We let parents dictate what their children should be taught,
Definitely not true. Perhaps we let "the collective" decide, but I assure you that what I see in elementary school in particular makes me visibly angry.
I have a computer science degree, and I can tell you that computer science isn't science.
In its most abstract form, it's mathematics. The act of implementing algorithms in software could be more accurately described as software engineering.....if the profession actually had things like professional organizations and quality assurance measures like accreditation, certification, and licensing.
So I guess "computer science" really isn't science OR engineering.
What these guys want are more code monkey factory workers - and they want the government to pay for the training.
There are currently over 500,000 open computing jobs
WHERE?!?!
My issue is that you really, really shouldn't be teaching someone to code without teching them general computer literacy.
"Computer literacy" usually means the ability to use a word processor, and a browser. That is NOT necessary to learn programming. 3rd and 4th graders can learn programming using Scratch without knowing any other applications. If by "computer literacy", you mean understanding how computers actually work, that is certainly not necessary. I have met very capable CS PhDs that don't know what a transistor is.
You realize that coding is applicable to more than just a CS degree, right? I'm a mechanical engineer that ends up coding for 80% of my job. It's a tool to get a job done. We have a pretty decent shortage of engineers that can code. There are more jobs out there where coding lends itself to 'automate the boring things'.
It's not strictly necessary to have some computer literacy for programming, but literacy is far more useful than some programming knowledge you don't know how to really put to use. By "computer literacy" I just mean something you would expect the guy programming software you might actually use to know, like "what's a home directory?" Not to mention, being better at computers in general allows you to put those skill to use in other areas of your education.
Some of the biggest names in tech and corporate America, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, have teamed up with governors and educators to ask Congress to provide $250 million in federal funding to school districts in order to give every single K-12 student in the nation an opportunity to learn how to code.
Cash and cash equivalents on the balance sheet for US operations:
Apple $38 Billion
Facebook $18 Billion
Microsoft $105 Billion
Walmart $8 Billion
And they have the nerve to ask the taxpayers to pony up more for something they freely admit will benefit them? Here's an idea, they can fucking fund it themselves if they think it is so damn important. $250 million? Apple makes $70,000 in profit every 60 seconds. That means Apple could cover the entire amount with the profit they make in 2.5 days.
Instead of getting the Government to fund computer science education, how about we just require computer companies to pay competitive salary? It doesn't require any tax dollars, and it's just crazy enough to work.
The problem is, the past 30 years have taught MBA's that *they're* the ones who are supposed to get the $200k salary, and the computer engineer is the one who's supposed to have a Masters and 20 years of experience in a 3 year old language and work for $60k until their job gets outsourced to India.
The problem will largely go away once the computer geek's biggest problem is "Do I buy the BMW or the Mercedes", and the MBA's are crying themselves to sleep, praying they can pay their student loans off before they hit 40 and are too old to spreadsheet.
How many people realize that our education system has gone from the best in the world 100 years ago to 3rd rate today. Look at a test per grade in the 1900s and today, and see how "great" the takeover has been. Oh sure, it was gradual and planned to be gradual. Departments started pushing toward centralized testing and industrial education back in the 30s. Most schools were using Prussian education by the early 40s and Classical education was on the way out. The nail in the coffin however is when the Feds took over the schools completely. How many people realize that the Department of Education was founded in 1979? At which point schools have degraded immeasurably. Arts are mostly gone, which includes music. PhysEd is mostly gone, debate is mostly gone. English has become "best guess at intended" instead of grammatically correct, Math has gone from conceptual to task based half assed rote learning. Science has similarly become doing what passes a measure, not what teaches a kid. All of it has become "WHAT PASSES THE STANDARDIZED TEST!", and not remotely related to making intelligent people.
Making yet another standardized test process to avoid actually teaching does not fix the problems with education. It will simply mean that the few people left who try to find facts will also be left in the cold.
Oh sure, there are parents out there trying their damn best to fill in the gaps and school on their own despite paying taxes. We are also starting to see parents chastised for trying to teach anything that the Government did not approve the school to teach. Systems are out there already preventing parents from seeing what kids learn, all licensed to the few corporations who own Common Core of course.
Most teachers a few decades ago worked to better society. Today I talk to more teachers who work for a paycheck than who want a better society. Government audits have educators on very short leashes, and constant fear is not a good motivator. I'd say the world is going to hell, but I'm not quite convinced we are not already in hell.
Want to fix it? Okay, fire the Feds and State and hire educators who will revert our system to a Classical system of education. Change is scary, but what we have today was a change from a system that worked for a couple thousand years. Someone else can have the soap box now..
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I agree with the notion that you should build skills incrementally in parallel, but what these groups are suggesting is nothing of the sort. It's sort of like teaching someone to write, but then just plain never teaching them any reading comprehension. But reading/writing isn't an apt example anyway, since those are both pretty "core" skills. Comp literacy vs programming is more like changing oil versus rebuilding an engine. In a typical K-12 comp sci program, you're unlikely to get that stuff as you go along, because it's usually not in the curriculum. Take a look at AP comp sci: all the usual stuff like data structures, OOP, some stuff specific to java, algorithms, and some drivel for good measure, but nothing even remotely about operating systems or other much more general subjects.
Adding CS to the US K-12 system sounds all well and good, but I might suggest that they step up their game. The US K-12 system exists because manufacturers needed folks to work in the Industrial Age, manufacturing, who had more wanted people to work for them with more than an 8th Grade education.
Today's Knowledge Age employers need to not merely be asking for CS, they need to be asking for a Pre-K through Bachelors system to get the sort of workers they really want.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
I really wish people would stop confusing computer science with programming computers. As the saying goes, "computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes".
My skepticism about being able to train school teachers aside, isn't it easier than it ever was for people to learn about computers, programming and computer science? I mean, I grew up in the 80's and taught myself how to program out of magazines and books. There was no Internet, no YouTube videos and no Kahn Academy. You couldn't look questions up on StackExchange, or even order books from Amazon. Computers were also really expensive, now you can get a $30 device that will run Linux and everyone is walking around with smartphones.
Great, now tell me why I need to understand the intricacies of operating systems programming, just to write a simple program?
You don't need to. But knowing things like directory structures and other general computing knowledge like that is far, far more useful than minimal programming knowledge. Your analogy is backwards: general computing is like checking oil while programming is like rebuilding the engine. One is very useful even if you just have a little bit of knowledge, the other much less so. I'm not trying to say "don't teach anyone to program", just pointing out the idiocy in teaching them some very specific skill in one area while missing the big (and much more useful) picture. What all the topics you mentioned have in common is that even if people choose not to pursue those fields, they still can likely use some of what they acquired: nobody goes through life never doing any math, everyone has to read stuff and sometimes write it too (even if it's nothing but a post on Facebook), everyone encounters some form of life so biology is useful.
There's also the issue that people are turned off of programming by a lack of practicality. If you're teaching someone about linked lists and sorting algorithms, it's very unlikely that any of the pgorams they make in such a course will actually be something that they would actually use. Instead, if you were to teach them how to automate some common task, it would not only teach them more about general computing, but would get them more interested in programming because they can immediately see the use of it. You might write a simple shell script that you use for 10 years, but the stuff that gets taught in comp sci classes tends to be just as throwaway as any other school assignment.
In Michigan, we can't seem to fix Flint's water, our crumbling roads and infrastructure, or a come up with a sane tax system. The only thing the legislature seems capable of is passing laws every year that cause chaos in public schools.
That's substantially (though not entirely) because we have a republicans in control of the state house, state senate and governorship. As a result they break out in hives any time anyone mentions the word "tax". The only way we will fix Michigan's shitty roads is by raising taxes in some fashion and they are completely unwilling to do it. If you haven't been to Michigan lately, you literally can tell when you've crossed the border from Ohio or Indiana with your eyes close in many places. It's that bad. Furthermore since teacher's unions are a traditional source of power for democratic party they do everything they can to weaken teachers, even if that comes at the expense of students. They seemingly have no concept of the idea of education being a public good.
The Flint water problem is honestly just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to problems in Flint. Flint's problem go FAR deeper than the lead in their water pipes. But the water in Flint is a classic case of stepping over a dollar to pick up a nickel. It's a lovely potpourri of arrogance, incompetence, bad policy, corruption and politics.
Sad thing is that Michigan is actually a really nice place to live even in spite of these problems. Yes even in Metro Detroit. (most people don't actually live in the city itself) Shame it's been so badly managed because it could be so much more than it is.
Next you'll tell us that political science isn't a rigorous experimental science.
My issue is that you really, really shouldn't be teaching someone to code without teching them general computer literacy. It's a bit like trying to teach someone calculus without teaching them algebra first.
You mean like what the HtDP project is trying?
Ezekiel 23:20
"Computer literacy" usually means the ability to use a word processor, and a browser.
It may, but it shouldn't, ideally. A computer is a universal programmable device. Learning how to use a word processor and a browser is more like common apps literacy. Teaching kids how to use MS Word and calling it "computer literacy" sounds to me like teaching kids how to replicate the glyphs of Lord's Prayer and calling it "teaching to write". A universal medium doesn't work like that.
Ezekiel 23:20
This is basic supply manipulation. These companies want H1B-style pricing for local developers.
Firing Americans to hire cheap Indian labour doesn't play well in the media. Solution: teach everyone to code. If everyone's a programmer, companies can play cheap locals off of cheap imports, and "hire more americans" at significant savings.
Optics solved, costs reduced, profits maximized, management class protected.
Assholes.
It's history for people that don't want to be history professors.
Kids will learn directory structures at some point, but directories trees serve one purpose only: organise large amounts of data. If you don't have lots of stuff to organise, what's the point? When kids' literacy is at the point where they're using word processing, slideware etc for class work, they will have a use for directory structures, and they will learn it. You can teach that sort of thing in the abstract! Programming has incredible potential for school lessons because something actually happens, unlike sums on paper etc. I came through primary school when Logo was the "big thing" -- the teacher only understood the very basics, and quickly we were left to learn it from the book, but the whole scheme was designed to start us thinking about geometry as a concrete concept -- we were making polygons by turning fractions of 360 degrees, we noted that a regular hexagon of side length 10 was a lot bigger than a square with sides 10 units long (even if we didn't know what the actual area was). "Hello world" tasks and some of the basic games people do a lot of in Scratch don't teach that, so there's a lot of work to be done on making a curriculum that integrates computing into general learning, rather than treating it as a distinct and separate thread.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Perhaps consider hiring unemployed, experienced IT workers instead of focusing on students fresh out of college? Just a thought...
Ken