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To ensure that every child can learn the skills required to work in New York City's fast-growing technology sector, Mayor Bill de Blasio will announce on Wednesday that within 10 years all of the city's public schools will be required to offer computer science to all students.
Meeting that goal will present major challenges, mostly in training enough teachers. There is no state teacher certification in computer science, and no pipeline of computer science teachers coming out of college. Fewer than 10 percent of city schools currently offer any form of computer science education, and only 1 percent of students receive it, according to estimates by the city's Department of Education.
Computer science will not become a graduation requirement, and middle and high schools may choose to offer it only as an elective. But the goal is for all students, even those in elementary school and those in the poorest neighborhoods, to have some exposure to computer science, whether building robots or learning to use basic programming languages like Scratch, which was devised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to teach young children the rudiments of coding.
Decades into the Information Revolution, and America's largest city is poised to make computer science an elective. This article makes me wonder what teachers think "computer science" is.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2015, @12:41AM
"The president was just shot" would be Breaking News.
We really need to get a handle on this.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday September 18 2015, @12:58AM
Unless it was done ironically. In ten years they will offer an elective? Breaking News!
And of course it being the government they will standardize on something already obsolete now and start teaching it a decade later when they will have to have machines that can run whatever it is special ordered to get something that far out of production. Like some drag and drool 'app creator' for a iPad or something. The talk of using something that is actually semi-sensible like Scratch mentioned above is just a head fake. No chance of something that sane.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 18 2015, @10:50AM
This is sadly very true.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday September 18 2015, @02:02AM
I concur. It's not a huge problem but this is the wrong nexus for a 2-day old story.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Friday September 18 2015, @02:18AM
You are correct, it should have been listed under "News". Thanks for pointing out the error. It has been rectified.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 4, Funny) by Non Sequor on Friday September 18 2015, @03:01AM
Breakin' News:
Electric Boogaloo
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 18 2015, @10:55AM
Nah, breaking news is news that contains a hidden exploit, so that things break if you access that news. ;-)