Kids To Get the Best CS Teachers $15/Hr Can Buy 157
theodp (442580) writes "Billionaire-backed Code.org, enthusiastically tweets U.S. Dept. of Education Chief Arne Duncan, is 'providing tremendous leadership in bringing coding & computer science to our nation's schools.' Including bringing kids in Broward County Public Schools the best computer science teachers $15.00-an-hour can buy, according to a document on the school district's website. One wonders how the Broward teachers feel about Code.org apparently coughing up $38.33-an-hour for Chicago teachers who attend the required Code.org professional development, which ironically covers equity issues. Duncan's shout-out comes days after Code.org claimed in its Senate testimony that 'our students have voted with their actions [participating in an hour-long, Angry Birds-themed Blockly tutorial starring Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates]: that learning computer science is this generation's Sputnik moment, that it's part of the new American Dream, and that it should be available to every student, in every school, as part of the standard curriculum.'"
Re:A sputnik moment?? (Score:5, Insightful)
We are in times where someone who makes a billion developing a social app or game is considered to have done something important.
Re:sputnik moment? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, that's cynical and wrong. It's people looking to lower wages of software developers as well as justify immediate requests for more H1Bs, all while taking away the focus on improving our nation's weak skills in the basics of reading, math, and science.
(Note that cynicism is orthogonal of correctness.)
15 an hour??? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you can teach coding, you can get a job making more than 15 an hour. You're only going to get awful teachers at that salary.
Re:A sputnik moment?? (Score:1, Insightful)
I do hope that people read this and see how desperately we need numerous reforms. Ask a kid today "How much money is too much money?" and the overwhelming majority will claim there is no such thing. Even when disproportionate earnings becomes detrimental to society, because "me" is all that matters according to what we teach in classrooms and media. Plenty of parents try to teach higher morality, but success is surely limited by pressure from government and media.
Socrates had it right in the Allegory of the Artisan, and I doubt many so called intellectuals know what that is.