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posted by martyb on Sunday June 14 2015, @06:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the this-will-prove-interesting dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Sunday June 14 2015, @11:06AM

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Sunday June 14 2015, @11:06AM (#196083)

    Assuming, of course, that these classes won't just be Microsoft Essentials classes or mere programming classes where they copy code out of a book labeled as Computer Science classes, they will almost certainly be taught poorly. We can't even teach math, English, or any of the other subjects correctly; all they want is rote memorization. You're not expected to truly understand anything. Likely, people will get nothing out of this unless they explore on their own; the same as before, in other words.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2015, @01:08PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2015, @01:08PM (#196111)

    This is so true. The level of stupidity I encountered in public school was astonishing to me as an immigrant from Eastern Europe. I came to this country in 6th grade and basically did not learn ANY new math for 4 fuckin years! But of course I took a yearly test that was a joke and stated I was at 12th grade+ level in XYZ. So what the fuck was I doing in said grade then? And this was good 20 years ago, I dare not to even fathom what the schools are up to today!

    And of course in College I did not even get to any real computer science till Junior year almost. Sure the discrete math courses were at least exciting, and some of calculus was on point, but vast majority of classes I had to take were a huge waste of my time. It was nothing I was interested in. Physics 2? Come on.... Luckily there was a nice Cryptography class that was an elective, an elective in AI, and some foundation courses that dealt with all kinds of Automata, and finally an Algorithms course which made me happy as a clam. Now I'm thinkign about Masters and hoping it's not a waste of my time. i want to actually learn computer science.

    • (Score: 1) by dingus on Sunday June 14 2015, @02:34PM

      by dingus (5224) on Sunday June 14 2015, @02:34PM (#196127)

      aww man, you're lucky. The most interesting elective at my school was just calculus-based physics, and the closest thing to computer science was basically java programming.

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 14 2015, @03:53PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday June 14 2015, @03:53PM (#196146) Journal

    Well, the problem is that it is hard to test understanding. Testing memorized knowledge is easy. You ask for it, and then you compare the given answer with the expected answer (which is considered the "correct" answer, by definition). If they match, it's a point, otherwise it's no point.

    Now imagine you'd try to propose an education that focuses on understanding instead of learning. What would be the result? Well, those educated children would be worse at the standardized knowledge tests (obviously, since they did spend less time memorizing stuff). Therefore your method would have been "objectively proven worse".

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by patrick on Sunday June 14 2015, @04:32PM

      by patrick (3990) on Sunday June 14 2015, @04:32PM (#196162)

      Actually, for the past decade, I've taught in a school that focuses on understanding instead of rote memorization. We don't give them any tests except one standardized test a year, and they score equal to (or slightly above) demographically similar schools.

      But we start at kindergarten and go up from there to Middle School. You can't suddenly switch a Middle School full of teachers & kids who are used to the "traditional" lecture/worksheet based curriculum to our model and hope for success (though I've seen schools try). Both teachers & students don't do well. You have to start from kindergarten, allow the children to keep their habit of exploring & learning for themselves, and build from there.

    • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Sunday June 14 2015, @06:07PM

      by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Sunday June 14 2015, @06:07PM (#196203)

      Someone who truly understands something will very likely be able to pass some poorly-designed standardized test with ease.

      • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday June 15 2015, @08:13AM

        by deimtee (3272) on Monday June 15 2015, @08:13AM (#196392) Journal

        Someone who truly understands something will very likely be able to pass some poorly-designed standardized test with ease.

        Not always. I've seen "science" tests where the questions might be something like:
        "Who invented the mining safety lamp?"
        A - Albert Einstein
        B - Humphry Davy
        C - Lord Cavendish
        D - Isaac Newton
        Understanding all about gas combustion at a metal mesh interface won't help you there.

        --
        If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
        • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday June 15 2015, @11:41AM

          by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Monday June 15 2015, @11:41AM (#196437)

          You're right. I guess I was thinking more about actual math questions when I said that. If it's just rote memorizing random facts, it wouldn't really help.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday June 14 2015, @05:12PM

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Sunday June 14 2015, @05:12PM (#196178)

    Assuming, of course, that these classes won't just be Microsoft Essentials classes or mere programming classes where they copy code out of a book labeled as Computer Science classes, they will almost certainly be taught poorly. We can't even teach math, English, or any of the other subjects correctly; all they want is rote memorization. You're not expected to truly understand anything. Likely, people will get nothing out of this unless they explore on their own; the same as before, in other words.

    Kids who do explore on their own end up getting in trouble for being "hackers".