SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Within a few years, every single student in the San Francisco Unified School District will be studying computer science, at all grade levels.
The city’s Board of Education unanimously approved the measure during its weekly meeting on Tuesday evening.
"Information technology is now the fastest growing job sector in San Francisco, but too few students currently have access to learn the Computer Science skills that are crucial for such careers," Board President Emily Murase said in a statement on Wednesday. "We are proud to be at the forefront of creating a curriculum that will build on the knowledge and skills students will need starting as early as preschool."
According to the district, computer science classes are relatively rare across the United States.
"Currently, no national, state, or local standards exist for Computer Science and the academic research in Computer Science education is quite limited," the board wrote. "As such, a cohesive progression of Computer Science knowledge and skills does not yet exist."
It's the year 2015. Why isn't CompSci a mandatory part of the curriculum everywhere in America? It was at my gymnasium (academic high school) in Germany, and that was 25 years ago.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by E_NOENT on Sunday June 14 2015, @09:33AM
I file this under the "every kid in the district needs a laptop | tablet" thinking that seems to be everywhere lately.
"Well, it's a tech-driven world, and they need to be familiar with the latest technology or else!!11!" I hear.
Yet here's the school secretary, a 50-something, deftly working with accounts in Excel. SHE didn't have an iPad when she was in elementary school, now did she? Yet somehow she's able to make a living using a computer. How interesting!
I have a feeling that all these shiny, graphical gadgets will actually doom us in the end. I can't get my kid to learn how to write a Python program in a green-on-black rxvt because it's SOOOOOO BORING compared to the computer games he plays at school.
I'm not in the business... I *am* the business.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2015, @09:48AM
Python in rxvt is boring, you unfit parent. Teach your kid JavaScript in Chrome, for Christ's sake. It's a whole visual development environment with a command line and an integrated debugger and instant feedback. Start by pulling apart an Ajax web site, make fun changes to the user interface, do something with immediate gratification. Make a game of learning how something shiny and graphical works under the hood.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2015, @12:58PM
From watching a few classes where kids were having a great time learning Logo (long ago...), I'd say to teach your kids Scratch.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday June 14 2015, @04:12PM
I feel like Python has a much simpler syntax than ECMAScript. If I were teaching a child a first language, I'd pick Python over ECMAScript any day.
If you have the cash - and if you have cash for anything, it should be teaching your kids - littleBits and legos seem like a really awesome combination. [littlebits.cc] If I had kids (which I thankfully don't), I would get them some littleBits early. Like, right after they made the transition from duplos to legos. Then when their reading and writing is at a decent level, try to get them interested in a problem that is too complicated for their littleBits to solve.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday June 15 2015, @07:31PM
Maybe it's just because my first languages were all C variants (unless you could BASIC...) but I would *never* start someone with Python -- or any other whitespace sensitive language. You switch text editors and suddenly you have to reformat your entire program or the damn thing won't run anymore. You get two lines that *look* identical, but one works and the other causes the damn thing to crash. Javascript, as bad as it is, is far more sane.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Monday June 15 2015, @10:08PM
ECMAScript is whitespace sensitive, albeit not as much as python. It automatically inserts semicolons when you have a line break, if it feels that you needed one.
So
var saySomething = function (something) {
return console.log(something);
};
saySomething('foo');
will log 'foo' to the console, but
var saySomething = function (something) {
return
console.log(something);
};
saySomething('bar');
will be run as if return had a semicolon after it, and the ECMAScript interpreter will never evaluate the line below it. Nothing ever gets logged to the console.
I don't know of any horizontal whitespace issues with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2015, @11:59PM
Jesus, no. Don't start them off with these toy languages that will simply teach them bad habits. Start off with something like C and assembly, so they can get a better idea of what happens in the background. The people who don't get it aren't cut out to do anything anyway.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2015, @11:58AM
There are countless people who are able to "make a living using a computer". That doesn't mean they necessarily know much of anything about computers; only that they know how to follow directions applicable to their task at hand.
Every kid needs to learn how to problem solve, and every kid needs to learn the basics of how things work (be it plumbing, automobiles, computers, etc). If it's something they are going to use every day, and often completely depend on, then they should know the basics of how it works by the time they are a teenager.
Knowledge isn't a bad thing. Knowledge doesn't mean they'll do everything themselves, but it does mean they'll know when they are being ripped off when they have a "professional" do the work for them.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VortexCortex on Sunday June 14 2015, @05:27PM
I file this under the "every kid in the district needs a laptop | tablet" thinking that seems to be everywhere lately.
I did the same. It's another profit driven agenda. Not only does the government then subsidize hardware & software companies by purchasing products / OSs / Compilers (because you know lobbyists won't be for FLOSS), but it fits right in with the Bilderberg / Bill Gates manufactured crisis in CS [slashdot.org]; The two prong approach aims to get more H1B visa workers (while refusing to hire locally and only appearing to comply with job listing regulations) and further to drive down the cost of hiring CS grads by flooding the market. An unspoken issue is that the false "shortage of CS grads" drives more people into poverty by saddling them with a debt they can't pay off. Meanwhile, a self taught high school graduate who's a "natural" at CS and has a portfolio full of FLOSS contributions and completed projects due to their "hobby" is able to get employed sans degree; By the time the CS graduate competitors enter the work force the self taught individual earns about the same or more as they do, but without any of the debt or wasted years; This combined with the lowering quality accreditation due to online courses demonstrates an education bubble is about to pop. The CS degrees are worth less than they cost (hence employment exams are needed, because a degree says squat), and businesses (esp. colleges) are trying to milk the bubble for as much as they can before having to cash out.
From the link above:
The NY Times' Eric Lipton was just awarded a 2015 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting that shed light on how foreign powers buy influence at think tanks. So, it probably bears mentioning that Microsoft's 'two-pronged' National Talent Strategy (PDF) to increase K-12 CS education and the number of H-1B visas — which is on the verge of being codified into laws — was hatched at an influential Microsoft and Gates Foundation-backed think tank mentioned in Lipton's reporting, the Brookings Institution. 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.
Now, it's my experience teaching children to make games in Javascript, BASIC, C and Assembly (in days gone by) at my local Community Centers, that most children only want to be able to say "Look at what I made", they don't really want to learn to code and do the work to make something. About 10% of those who attend actually take to computer science like water, complete their project, and typically begin to intuit higher mathematics from their newfound ability to see algorithms in action. Last year, one 15 year old began to re-invent calculus to solve the problem of efficiently rendering curves. I immediately begged her parents to get better schooling, homeschooling if necessary, at least purchase some used college algebra, trig, and calculus books. That is to say, I think CS can really help inquisitive students who learn by doing. However the CS courses should be elective, because most kids just don't learn that way -- in fact, everyone learns a bit differently: different subjects at different rates and different times in their development, thus curriculum free schooling works well. [wikipedia.org]
Furthermore, the kids who accelerate their learning of higher mathematics by leveraging their CS knowledge should be given an avenue to study at a higher level -- The same goes for all subjects, but this is not typically the case in public schools. Given that the current public education system is designed to neuter brilliant minds [youtube.com], and the likelihood that only a subset of children will grasp (and utilize) CS's abstract problem solving principals, I see this "CS across all grades" push as yet another way to retard the education of students on average. The goal being that those who do excel will quickly become bored and frustrated with the dead end of our outcome based educational methods, and the others will simply struggle with yet another useless (to them) subject. Meanwhile, the rich will educate their children in private schools which have a more flexible curriculum, giving children of elites another leg up, and further cementing into being a less educated and compliant working class having been normalized in skill, opinion and attitude by the corrupt and manipulative public education system. If this sounds outlandish, watch the video I linked above, the practice has been going on for decades.
I won't apologize for the long-winded post, it's difficult to come to an understanding of what's really going on in the current educational system without understanding it and the agendas of those pushing these programs -- to say nothing of Common Core. [wordpress.com] I wasn't surprised in the least to see the agenda coming to San Fransisco first, knowing of the degree of influence certain ideologies hold there.