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3 Years Ago, Microsoft Said Tech Should Fund K-12 CS Education. What Changed? (motherjones.com)
theodp writes: Last week, Microsoft and some of the biggest names in tech and corporate America threw their weight behind a Change.org petition that urged Congress to fund K-12 Computer Science education. The petition, started by the tech-backed CS Education Coalition (btw, 901 K Street NW is Microsoft's DC HQ) in partnership with tech-backed Code.org, now has 90,000+ supporters. But three years ago, Microsoft backed a very different Change.org petition that called for corporate America to foot the STEM education bill.
"While the need to expand high-skilled immigration is immediate," read the letter to Congress, "we also need to expand STEM opportunities in U.S. education. A positive proposal has emerged in Washington to create a national STEM education fund, paid for only by businesses using green cards and visas. This fund will help prepare Americans for 21st-century STEM jobs. The proposal is supported by a broad coalition [PDF] that includes Microsoft, GE, the National Council of La Raza, the National Association of Manufactures, and the National Science Teachers Association, to name a few."
The earlier petition, which wound up with 41,009 supporters, was started by Voices for Innovation, a self-described "Microsoft supported community" that says it's now "proud to support the Computer Science Education Coalition" as part of its efforts to "shape public policies for our 21st century digital economy and society." So, what changed? Well, Mother Jones did warn that what Microsoft promises and what it delivers for education isn't necessarily the same...
"While the need to expand high-skilled immigration is immediate," read the letter to Congress, "we also need to expand STEM opportunities in U.S. education. A positive proposal has emerged in Washington to create a national STEM education fund, paid for only by businesses using green cards and visas. This fund will help prepare Americans for 21st-century STEM jobs. The proposal is supported by a broad coalition [PDF] that includes Microsoft, GE, the National Council of La Raza, the National Association of Manufactures, and the National Science Teachers Association, to name a few."
The earlier petition, which wound up with 41,009 supporters, was started by Voices for Innovation, a self-described "Microsoft supported community" that says it's now "proud to support the Computer Science Education Coalition" as part of its efforts to "shape public policies for our 21st century digital economy and society." So, what changed? Well, Mother Jones did warn that what Microsoft promises and what it delivers for education isn't necessarily the same...
Would I be crazy to steer my kids towards CS theses days?
First, spend money on paying teachers, repairing buildings, buying computers and internet access for students who can't afford it (like many in the inner city schools), since all the books, etc are now e-books (not necessarily a bad thing). Hell, many of the kids in the poorer schools need breakfast and lunch.
Tech and programming education is a distant second to competency in English, Math and History. Our schools (especially the ones in poor areas) are crying out for money, just to competently teach the basics, never mind tech education.
Oh, and special ed, ELL for new immigrants, alternative tracks for low level learners, all those should also be getting funding before we start trying to teach everyone to be a programmer.
Remember folks, everyone working for Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple learned to code WITHOUT a nationwide secondary school program.
Priorities, people.
, 901 K Street NW is Microsoft's DC HQ
640 K would've been enough for anybody.
The ideal market would be multiple qualified candidates for every job opening.
Whether that occurs due to the proposed domestic educational steering program or due to H1B-type legislation doesn't much matter to them. If the government is also willing to pick up the tab, well, that's just gravy.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
You have to remember what was happening then. Windows 8.1 was released to do a ton of bug fixes. Windows 9/10 was just starting to get steam. They needed something to distract the public from how bad the Windows 8.0 OS and new Windows phone were at the time.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Microsoft lies, and if you trusted them, you are stupid. End of line.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
as quickly as possible with a steady H1B labor stream, but not neglecting the domestic commodity labor pool only requires redefining primary education.
We are halfway there with the boot camp/zero tolerance model. Separates the sheep from the goats.
Because more is never enough, and if we can't use child labor at least we can get them started early.
As the H-1B glut depresses wages, it will further discourage enrollment in STEM programs. It's a downward spiral that will result in no Americans going into STEM education paths.
I have young kids. I see that some kids genuinely are interested in math and science. Unfortunately most of these kids are being told by their parents that there are little opportunities in STEM fields.
I also see many more kids taking the vocational/technical track than when I was in school. Vo-tech seems to have lost it's stigma and is even being praised by many former tech workers.
The H-1B program has caused almost irreparable harm to the tech sector in the US. It may take a generation to undo the damage.
And that's it.
Computer Science Education Coalition Lobbyists: Cornerstone Government Affairs (Microsoft also a client), Penn Hill Group (Microsoft also a client),Third Dimension Strategies.
>> Microsoft, GE, the National Council of La Raza, the National Association of Manufactures, and the National Science Teachers Association
I see 2 corporations, 2 associations and one racist council (La Raza stands for "The Race"), members of which frequently advocate for re-conquering "Aztlan" (the american southwest, California to Colorado) and ceding control back to mexico. "The Race" has a large overlap with Mecha, a group that has the motto "For La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada", translated meaning "For The Race, Everything. Outside The Race, Nothing".
http://humanevents.com/2006/04...
they discovered there was no money in it for them.
I have young kids. I see that some kids genuinely are interested in math and science. Unfortunately most of these kids are being told by their parents that there are little opportunities in STEM fields.
I think there are, in other countries. If you push your kids towards STEM, you should also push them to learn at least one if not two other languages, preferably big European ones.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I wish you could lose that apostrophe you put into a possessive pronoun. It's means it is.
They support both corporate AND Congressional funding. Another theodp anti-education rant.
Giving Microsoft the control that comes with being the sole funding source of schools would be disastrous. So much for OSX and Linux!
This seems like an out-of-context quote like "640k". It must be rip on Bill Gates day at Slashdot.
3 Years Ago, Microsoft Said Tech Should Fund K-12 CS Education. What Changed?
What changed was that Microsoft would have to actually HIRE people who went through those CS programs.
No thanks, they said, they prefer to lay off thousands of US workers and bring people in through their Vancouver office using L1 visas.
When they can make you pay to train their worker drones and call it capitalism.
Actually Chinese/Mandarin, Korean, and Japanese would be better choices.
I think Chinese/Mandarin, Korean, Japanese would be better.
In any market, the higher the ratio of supply to demand, the lower the price paid per unit of whatever is being supplied. Tech firms aren't simply interested in fulfilling their personnel needs - they want a sizeable surplus workforce so they can keep wages low. That way they can have lots of people whose first language is English and for whom local cultural norms are second nature, competing for relatively low-paying jobs. Then the whole H-1B thing will no longer be an issue.
Any corporation would like nothing better than for the vast majority of its workforce to consist of fully interchangeable commodity 'components'.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
how about backing student loans / higher edu?
That is part of why it's hard to find people at cheaper price when they have big ones to pay off. Also the high cost of housing in CA.
Vo-tech used to be good but now needs to drop the needs to be 4 years part and the cost needs to come down as well.
For lot's of jobs 4 years is to long and at some schools there is like 1-1.5 years of filler and fluff that costs way to much. Now back in the day when the cost of school was lower and there where a lot more jobs that did not need the 4 years + of school.
Places like ITT, devry and others where good. University of Phoenix was the school for working pros who did not have the time for school in the day and most schools did not like non full time students also some schools where very theory loaded.
In Germany they have a good Vocational Education / apprenticeship system. In the usa even people in the armed forces after they get out have to go back to school for 4 years to get a piece of paper to do the same job they where doing.
There's nothing wrong with tech education / computer science being taught in schools.
In fact, it goes along with math education quite well. It could significantly boost the visual and feedback components of a math education (see ProjectEuler.net).
There are also some pretty important tools that programmers use in software projects that would significantly benefit people (source code control). If we had an educational site that used the functionality behind github, a student would be able to see their progress over their years and save all of their work, never losing anything.
Even if we don't focus on STEM solely, we should take inputs and get the best tools and techniques into the education system. For further inspiration, see FreeCodeCamp.com - that's the model we should focus on for education, boost the feedback process and have little test cases that auto test the code as it's created, with instant showing of how the output changes as the input changes. If we front load our testing in that way, it takes away the need to do so many backloaded / heavy testing at the end. We can still test at the end, but we won't need to test as often, and we will possibly be able to do more cross-disciplinary projects.
"While the need to expand high-skilled immigration is immediate," read the letter to Congress, "we also need to expand STEM opportunities in U.S. education."
The problem is not with the H-1B program itself; the letter of the law provides a good relief valve for companies who really need a skill that can't easily be taught or acquired. The problem is twofold:
- Big tech companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Cisco, Google, etc. use the loopholes in the law to bring in direct, cheaper replacement workers that usually aren't any better than those they could get or train locally.
- Companies whose core business is not IT sign an outsourcing deal with Tata, Cognizant, Accenture, IBM, HP, Wipro or any of the other big IT body shops. To make margin on the deal, these companies use the loopholes in the law to replace former IT staff they inherited from their customer after all the knowledge has been transferred.
Until these are at least mitigated somewhat, rational actors are not going to choose a STEM career no matter how much money you put into education. There are many more stable alternatives -- if you're smart, medicine and pharmacy are the only professions with enough political muscle behind them to ensure a restricted supply, high demand and high salaries. If you're not a super genius, there's skilled trades in union states; training is covered through an apprenticeship and pay/benefits are guaranteed through a strong union. If you're crafty, you can go get an MBA and become an investment banker or management consultant.
As someone who helps hire people for our team, there is some truth to the fact that there is a skills shortage. There are a lot of people who coast through their IT careers and who aren't really suited for the job. I'm less sympathetic to someone who's managed to carve out a niche in a big organization and not learn a whole lot after that. There are also a lot of very good people who can't sell themselves well. I just don't think it's so bad that we should give up on the entire domestic talent pool. Keeping a steady stream of junior positions open is the key here -- bring someone on, let them learn in a supervised environment, and they will eventually be quite good or get frustrated and do something else. The problem is that doing most simple tasks offshore or with replacement workers means no one has the opportunity to develop their skills.
STEM careers have the somewhat undeserved reputation of being completely dead-end. I think that temporarily this may be true, but most companies are starting to realize that the stories their offshore consultancies are telling them about cost savings aren't as rosy as they think. The company I work at is notorious for being several years out-of-phase on industry trends. They're just on the cusp of realizing they don't have a great system in place after offshoring almost all development work, and we're just now implementing the early-2000's Google open plan office. In other words, these cycles take time to pan out industry wide.
[...] you should also push them to learn at least one if not two other languages, preferably big European ones.
Doesn't hurt to be proficient in English, which is more or less an international language these days. Too many young adults are using '+' or '&' for the word 'and' in writing sentences. Concatenation symbols are fine when programming with computers, but not when communicating with people.
My Dad was a EE. I'm a programmer. I will encourage my kids to be plumbers or HVAC techs.
It's unfortunate that high schools have dropped vo-tech in favor of college prep.
since all the books, etc are now e-books (not necessarily a bad thing).
The geek is in denial about the limitations of e-books. They well and truly suck for anything but plain text.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opi...
Learning to code is overrated: An accomplished programmer would rather his kids learn to read and reason
BY Jeff Atwood
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, September 27, 2015, 5:00 AM
Mayor de Blasio is winning widespread praise for his recent promise that, within 10 years, all of New York Cityâ(TM)s public schoolchildren will take computer science classes. But as a career programmer who founded two successful software startups, I am deeply skeptical about teaching all kids to code.
When I became fascinated with computers as a teenager in the early 1980s, computers booted up to a black screen and a blinking cursor. You had to learn the right commands to get them to do anything at all. In other words, you were forced to become a computer programmer in order to be a computer user.
One of the great achievements of modern computing is that we no longer need to be programmers to create, build and get things done with the amazing supercomputers that everyone carries around in their pockets.
Thatâ(TM)s a victory we should claim for our kids â" rather than purposefully, almost gleefully sending them back to the era before computers became user-friendly tools.
Iâ(TM)m not saying young people should be oblivious to the way the sausage is made, any more than they should be oblivious to where their food comes from. Indeed, in the coming decades, there are thousands if not millions of good jobs waiting for skilled programmers and creative thinkers who understand the logic of programming.
But as someone whoâ(TM)s been immersed in the digital world for most of his life, I can attest: Computer science is less an intellectual discipline than a narrow vocational skill.
If someone tells you âoecoding is the new literacyâ because âoecomputers are everywhere today,â ask them how fuel injection works. By teaching low-level coding, I worry that we are effectively teaching our children the art of automobile repair. A valuable skill â" but if automobile manufacturers and engineers are doing their jobs correctly, one that shouldnâ(TM)t be much concern for average people, who happily use their cars as tools to get things done without ever needing to worry about rebuilding the transmission or even change the oil.
Thereâ(TM)s nothing wrong with basic exposure to computer science. But it should not come at the expense of fundamental skills such as reading, writing and mathematics â" and unfortunately today our schools, with limited time, have tons of pressure on them to convey those basics better.
Iâ(TM)ve known so many programmers who would have been much more successful in their careers if they had only been better writers, better critical thinkers, better back-of-the-envelope estimators, better communicators. And aside from success in careers, we have to ask the broader question: What kinds of people do we want children to grow up to be?
Itâ(TM)s true. Anyone can learn to code. But very few people can explain why they wrote a line of code, what that code does or convince other people to use it and help them build it. These are all essential human skills that have everything to do with the art of communicating with other people, and nothing at all to do with the writing code that a computer can understand.
Learning to talk to the computer is the easiest part. Computers, for better or worse, do exactly what you tell them to do, every time, in exactly the same way. The people â" well . . . youâ(TM)ll spend the rest of your life figuring that out. And from my perspective, the sooner you start, the better.
I want my children to understand how the Internet works. But this depends more on their acquisition of higher-order thinking than it does their understanding if ones and zeroes. It is essential that they that treat everything they read online critically.
I just think that if school would focus on teaching the native language of the students; and mathematics, then they should be able to learn everything else they need on their own, and according to their interests.
I don't understand the big push for STEM when Mathematics is a poorly marketable skill, and science is a low-paying field after crushing stress of getting a PhD.
Am I the only one in the world who thinks this way?
Take off every 'sig' !!