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White House Silence Seems To Confirm $4 Billion 'Computer Science For All' K-12 Initiative Is No More
theodp writes: "2016 as a year of action builds on a decade of national, state, and grassroots activity to revitalize K-12 computer science education," reads the upbeat White House blog post kicking off Computer Science Education Week. But conspicuous by its absence in the accompanying fact sheet for A Year of Action Supporting Computer Science for All is any mention of the status of President Obama's proposed $4 billion Computer Science For All initiative, which enjoyed support from the likes of Microsoft, Facebook, and Google. On Friday, tech-backed Code.org posted An Update on Computer Science Education and Federal Funding, which explained that Congress's passage of a 'continuing resolution' extending the current budget into 2017 spelled curtains for federal funding for the program in 2016 and beyond. "We don't have any direct feedback yet about the next administration's support for K-12 CS," wrote CEO Hadi Partovi and Govt. Affairs VP Cameron Wilson, "other than a promise to expand 'vocational and technical education' as part of Trump's 100-day plan which was published in late October. I am hopeful that this language may translate into support for funding K-12 computer science at a federal level. However, we should assume that it will not."
Now, we need a push so that kids the math, writing and science skills they'll need because the schools are failing horribly at those - especially science. What good is them learning to code when they still come out of school thinking Evolution is "just a theory" and not a fact?
Or coming out of school without the basic math skills to succeed in a STEM field.
And this focus on STEM is horribly musguided. Everything builds on one another. Music and art education is just as important and helps with other subjects. Why while everyone in my data structures class were struggling, I learned it instantaneously by making analogies to music.
And also keep in mind that compared to the general population, more Noble winners play instruments. Interesting correlation between musicality and scientific creativity.
But code.org is about creating a pool of low cost labor and not our economic future.
And soon, computers won't need to be programmed, they'll be trained.
Oh Noes!!! All those 'backers' won't have large cheap pool of labour anymore! Whatever shall we do?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Might as well teach US kids to make tennis shoes while you're at it.
US kids don't need more computer science, US companies are already (still) offshoring tech jobs as fast as they can.
The colleges want to keep selling the courses and the big tech guys want to say that they're "doing something" about "the problem" (meanwhile they need more H1Bs, please) but nobody else would benefit.
If US public education gets behind *any* concept, you can bet that it's at least 5 years out of date already, and may be 10+ years out of date.
All of these initiatives keep reinforcing it. Wake me up when some poor, rural community or ghetto school has seen a major improvement. I'm sick and tired of the nonsense where we give an already decent school more resources, some middle class kid (probably a girl) gets cajoled into taking CS as an elective and it's like "look ma, we're fighting inequality and making America work for everyone!"
FFS, we half of the kids that leave (one way or another) from inner city schools are functionally illiterate and we worry that some middle class kid who doesn't have enough curiosity to google "how to start programming" is not going to start? Priorities, you don't have them...
There is a common misconception among non-technical "folks" (i.e. lawyers, politicians etc) that anyone can learn to "code". Of course anyone can be shown how to write a "hello world" application in any language but that doesn't make them a programmer. Unfortunately the perception that "coding" is easy is perpetuated by these democratizing programs that try to turn everyone into a programmer. The fact is that writing the actual code is a small percentage of the intellectual effort required to implement a working software system.
We don't need a generation of code monkeys typing away at keyboards; we need people with mathematics and analytical skills. Our current education system is simply not producing enough people with math/analytical skills. Meddlesome, short-sighted Federal programs such as "computer science for all" are simply not addressing this basic lack of skills. The fact is that teaching the hard, basic skills required to produce technical professionals is very difficult but no one seems to have the stomach for hard work any more.