San Francisco Public Schools To Require Computer Science For Preschoolers 179
theodp writes: Never underestimate the ability of tech and its leaders to create a crisis. The S.F. Chronicle's Jill Tucker reports that the San Francisco School Board unanimously voted Tuesday to ensure every student in the district gets a computer science education, with coursework offered in every grade from preschool through high school, a first for a public school district. Tech companies, including Salesforce.com, as well as foundations and community groups, are expected to pitch in funding and other technical support to create the new coursework, equip schools and train staff to teach it. From Resolution No. 155-26A2 (PDF), In Support of Expanding Computer Science and Digital Learning to All Students at All Schools from Pre-K to 12th Grade: 1. "All students are capable of making sense of computer science in ways that are creative, interactive, and relevant." 2. "All students, from pre-K to 12, deserve access to rigorous and culturally meaningful computer science education and should be held to high expectations for interacting with the curriculum." 3. "Students' access to and achievement in computer science must not be predictable on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, language, religion, sexual orientation, cultural affiliation, or special needs." MissionLocal has a two-page SFUSD flyer on the project, which aims to illustrate the "importance of computer science" with the same Code.org jobs infographic that Microsoft used to help achieve its stated goal of creating a national K-12 CS crisis, and demonstrate "disparities in accessing CS education" for SFUSD's 57,000 students with a small-sample-size-be-damned bar chart of the racial demographics of the school district's 209 AP Computer Science participants (181 Asian, 0 African American, 6 Latino, 1 Native American, 14 White, 7 Other).
Good For Future Training (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good For Future Training (Score:5, Insightful)
These kids will be the new H-1B replacements. They're making the skill ubiquitous and thus increasing the amount of supply side talent which will help depress wages.
Re:Good For Future Training (Score:5, Insightful)
Please... the vast majority of these kids will only retain enough information to be moderately proficient users.
More likely though, the SanFran school system instituted this for the express purpose of flashing a buzzword to the parents, and pretend that they're 'doing something' to improve education.
best developers generally not taught (Score:3)
Re:best developers generally not taught (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't understand why it's all about coding. They would do the world a great service if they would teach early students computer science concepts such as: Combinations and permutations, Probability theory, Set Theory, Analysis of algorithms, Symbolic logic, basic proofs in symbolic logic.
They should keep the questions they ask students simple and involve engagement of the brain always presenting novel problems, rather than emphasizing rote, such as ability to solve practiced problems of a standard form for a time-limited testing session.
Plus confine the nature of tests to questions about theory/background, and limit problems on exams to trivial "Toy" problems that can be worked out mentally in less than 1 minute.
IOW: Evaluation primarily based on submitting assignments, class participation, and participation in group projects measured by the examiner inspecting the development documents and reviewing which tickets were assigned to which student, And what code each student committed.
Just teaching coding.... the average student will need half a semester, before they can successfully write "Hello World"
They might be capable of implementing FizzBuzz on their own after a few years.
BUT they may seriously inspire people or help spark interest in the field, so even if the courses are useless to 80% of the students...... I think it really is worth it to society to require that everyone being schooled has a taste of programming, And that the taste they get is Not biased towards the negative; in other words, the classes should be given in a digestible manner, still with a challenge, but tasks kept simple enough to avoid scaring people away.
Gap in Curriculum (Score:2)
Many of the creative geniuses in know, including myself, educated ourselves in technology and other subjects.
Clearly modesty was not one of the subjects you covered.
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You're an optimist (Score:3)
3. "Students' access to and achievement in computer science must not be predictable on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, language, religion, sexual orientation, cultural affiliation, or special needs."
The easiest way to accomplish that is to punish anyone who gets ahead of the class. WE MUST ALL BE EQUAL!!!
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Still... if you're just getting started in CS and want to make a livelihood; it might be a bonafide reason to have second thoughts.
Look for a budding industry that is niche and is or will be in high demand, that companies can't even think of commoditizing, and which has a high barrier to entry or cannot be automated or have workforce requirements for skilled workers significantly reduced by using technology.
I am thinking the ideal gig would involve working for the federal or state government in a dep
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Still... if you're just getting started in CS and want to make a livelihood; it might be a bonafide reason to have second thoughts.
Dude... these are preschoolers. They barely know how to count to 10 in Dec, and if they think of their "grown up" career at all, it's likely to be as an astronaut, cowboy, soldier, princess...
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They're making the skill ubiquitous and thus increasing the amount of supply side talent which will help depress wages.
I'm not personally worried..... my retirement plan is called COBOL, FORTRAN, and the Year 2038 bug.
In the mean time.... I might go back to school and pursue a EECE graduate degree, with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Automation, throw in some data science.
I don't think 90% of their "H-1B replacements" will be able to handle it.
And Coding is already chea
the plumbing of the 21st century (Score:5, Insightful)
this is why i'm going to make sure my kids know to use computers and possibly program as tools and background knowledge but go to school for something really valuable like advanced math
Re:the plumbing of the 21st century (Score:4, Insightful)
yeah, 10 years ago i had an electrician tell me how he spent $68,000 renovating his living room right before he gave me a quote for $3000 for some new outlets in the kitchen
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Do you even know how simple electrical wiring is? [...]
I think it is more nuanced than you suggest. If the electrical professional does everything else for you, then yeah, twisting the right properly marked wires together is simple. Assuming they are properly labelled.
Sometimes Hot and Common might be erroneously swapped on an existing install, and you are responsible for that if you add to the circuit without fixing it. Also, ground might not exist, or might be improperly setup at the time yo
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Gonna just rip out that drywall so you can run what you want? Great.... now how are you gonna put things back together?
Well that is my plan. There is too much wire in my house and I don't know what it all is controlling. I have a 36 bay breaker box and all 36 bays have a breaker in them yet I only have a 1900 sq. ft. house and there are 4 rooms that are all on the same breaker. Add in that there aren't enough outlets, or they aren't in the right spot, as well as wanting to run coax and network lines into each room and pulling down the sheet rock to put in conduit is looking like the cheapest and quickest solution. What make
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Well that is my plan. There is too much wire in my house and I don't know what it all is controlling.
Well..... you could trace things out with a tone and probe. Or $800 worth of equipment that can do Open/Closed circuit tracing to ID every wire is still a lot cheaper than the materials; if you're contemplating redoing the drywall on the entire house... it sounds like a heck of a lot of work, or tens of thousands of $$ in labor....
I only have a 1900 sq. ft. house and there are 4 rooms that are all
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Plus running the wires, patching and painting any holes in the drywall (or plaster, for older homes), figuring out what the idiot that wired the place was thinking when he ran the wires the way he did, crawling around in the attic or crawlspace (been in a poorly ventilated attic in the dead of summer?) and trying to fish a cable through (possibly through insulation), understanding the applicable codes (federal, state, and local) and making sure your work meets them, liaising with the local power authority i
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Because installing outlets is such a tricky operation, right?
Electrical code has a lot of details. And the gotchas tend to come from not knowing that you don't know something. (Yes, one can know that they don't know something. If you know you don't know something, you can look it up.)
What if you don't use a GFCI outlet where one was needed - do you know where GFCI outlets are needed and where they aren't? What if you decide to split an outlet so the top half can be operated by a switch; did you know code requires the two circuits to be on a two pole breaker?
Maybe you
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It isn't getting outsourced until roto-rooter starts sending robots.
Ah but when they do you will be glad you took that pre-school computing science class won't you!
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However when people try to teach plumbing to preschoolers then you know something is broken in their heads. Worse if they get their words wrong and think they're teaching Hydrolic Engineering to preschoolers when all they're teaching is how to turn on and off the faucet.
None of this proposal is even remotely "Computer Science". When kids are still learning to count to ten then it is too early to teach even the simplest of Computer Science concepts. Boolean logic? Abstract mathematics? Even simplistic b
Computer science and the lowest common denominator (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that it's appropriate to use computers to teach basic skills to children, but regardless of that perspective, it is wholly inappropriate to call an introduction to computers "computer science".
Re:Computer science and the lowest common denomina (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm saddened by the misapplication of "computer science" as a term. When I took computer classes, they were not called "computer science" until one was actually supposed to program the computer. Like, open an IDE, write code, and compile it. I don't think that it's appropriate to use computers to teach basic skills to children, but regardless of that perspective, it is wholly inappropriate to call an introduction to computers "computer science".
I'd go a step further and say learning a computer language isn't studying computer science any more than learning a foreign language is studying linguistics. There is a difference between acquiring a specific skill and understanding the concepts and theory behind how the skill is employed.
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This is exactly the message I came to say....but for me, it was Computer Literacy. I'm not opposed to teaching some form of programming (hopefully using something akin to LEGO Mindstorm where it's less about typing the code).....but honestly, most of the computer teachers around here aren't exactly great at it ---- if they were, they'd be in some sort of programming job because teacher pay really sucks.
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I'm saddened by the misapplication of "computer science" as a term. When I took computer classes, they were not called "computer science" until one was actually supposed to program the computer. Like, open an IDE, write code, and compile it. Classes on computer usage before that were called "technology", "desktop publishing", "computers", and other names that did not include "science". I don't think that it's appropriate to use computers to teach basic skills to children, but regardless of that perspective, it is wholly inappropriate to call an introduction to computers "computer science".
It just means that it is considered a common field now. Think of it like biology or chemistry or physics. Chemistry can cover everything from a basic grade school class to something like, say, nuclear magnetic resonance theory (hardest class I've ever taken). It's not a bad thing, it's a good thing.
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No, computer programming is a trade. Like plumber, or electrician. You go to a trade school and they'll teach you Java or C++ or whatever in a semester.
Computer engineering is the application of computers to solve
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Computer science also isn't programming the computer. Sure it involves that like "Chemistry science" involves test tubes and fume hoods.
But just like you can do chemistry without using a test tube you can do computer science without programming a computer. And just like you can use a test tube without doing chemistry you can program a computer without doing computer science.
But yes, it would be rather strange to wander through a preschool and hear: "OK class, can anyone tell me what a pushdown automaton is?
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I see lots of comments like yours, but after clicking 3 of the linked stories I don't see anything about the proposed curriculum. It's possible that it is, like you seem to assume, merely computer work and training.
It's also possible that it is in fact age appropriate computer science education. No, your kindergartner can't write C, but they can learn how to follow a flowchart to do a task that would be otherwise too complicated for them. They can play games and activities with sorting and filtering. The
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It's also possible that it is in fact age appropriate computer science education. No, your kindergartner can't write C, but they can learn how to follow a flowchart to do a task that would be otherwise too complicated for them. They can play games and activities with sorting and filtering. They can learn about '0'. You can even introduce the concepts behind the basic data structures to a kindergartner if you do it right. The kids need not touch a computer at all in a young "computer science" course.
I did some research into K-12 science education. Science magazine had a lot of good articles.
I thought the most important thing that professional teachers knew, that I didn't know, and that most non-teachers don't know, is figuring out what's age appropriate.
Science magazine gave some examples of some fairly important, sophisticated ideas that you can teach to kindergarten kids -- if you know how to do it. OTOH there were some ideas that I thought were obvious, that even high school kids had trouble with.
Wh
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I will narrow it. It's not computer science until we start calling maths 'number science'.
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Software engineering is mostly just about software management. There's almost no engineering involved.
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And even mere coding is normally an advanced concept. Preschoolers aren't even counting properly, they most likely don't know how to add or subtract, so there is no possibility of learning to "program" even.
This is just a continuation of the decades old hysteria parents have that their kids will fall behind. Dad can't figure out how to set up the VCR, so clearly VCRs are extremely difficult concepts and they should teach that in kindergarten. Apple gloriously bamboozled the parents over that with their a
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That varies, though. I've got an AS in computer science from a community college. There was little to no theoretical training involved - just three classes - Java, C, and Visual Basic programming (all taught by a guy that never stepped away from COBOL).
Of course, an associate's degree in computer science is worth slightly more than toilet paper, if only because of the fancy ink.
I smell a rat ... (Score:5, Funny)
"Tech companies, including Salesforce.com, as well as foundations and community groups, are expected to pitch in funding and other technical support to create the new coursework, equip schools and train staff to teach it."
At least they're pretty transparent about it.
Now, one question for you Bay Area folks - Is there any linkage between the folks on the school board and the nice people on whatever city commission that decided that cell phones cause cancer? I'd love to see a meeting with both groups.
Two groups of crazies enter, six leave (this is San Francisco, after all).
remember Udacity "rescuing" San Jose State? (Score:2)
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But it not work.
Apparently it didn't.
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Well when someone describes Salesforce.com as a "tech company" then it's easy to discount anything further that they say.
You mean those millions of iPads didn't work? (Score:4, Funny)
What, do you seriously mean those millions of iPads we bought for our schools DIDN'T make students any smarter?
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What, do you seriously mean those millions of iPads we bought for our schools DIDN'T make students any smarter?
The problem with that little experiment was that they treated the iPads as an end in themselves, instead of a means to an end, and had no plan on how to implement the means. Basically it was:
Phase 1. Give Kids iPads
Phase 2. ?
Phase 3. Profit!
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The problem a few years ago with giving every child an iPad, and now teaching everyone computer science, is that people are thinking it's a silver bullet and that it's going to solve the problem. The issue is that they are going to throw a bunch of money at this (and the next silver bullet idea, and the next) and it won't solve the problem.
Children, and adults too, are all unique and require different ways to motivate them. So if you give everyone an iPad there will be a certain percentage that will thriv
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The products given to schools, or given at a discount, were done in order to create future customers. The intent was never to provide any other sort of education.
the flat curve (Score:2)
"Students' access to and achievement in computer science must not be predictable on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, language, religion, sexual orientation, cultural affiliation, or special needs."
How does anyone imagine that is achievable, except by not marking ... performance?
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>> How does anyone imagine that is achievable
"The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal..."
http://archive.org/stream/Harr... [archive.org]
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That doesn't mean that all the kids need to get the same grade. And I'm sure "special needs" doesn't mean the developmentally challenged kids (who generally get their own curriculum), but kids with handicaps or IEPs. In other words, screenreaders or braille pads have to be available, and the IEP program has to adapt to the requirements for students with particular learning disabilities.
"Access" means all schools in the area get the same equipment and programs (and theoretically, all teachers receive appro
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"(in-effect-)equal achievement" means "equal compulsion" only in some language that is not English.
(If it were simply about "equal access", most of the quoted paragraph - listing identity group after identity group - wouldn't have to be there.)
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Equal compulsion is the only real method to actually accomplish "equal achievement." Otherwise, it'll only be the white and asian boys signing up for it.
Listing the various identity groups is standard fare for government programs. There's still a lot of people around who remember segregation.
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"signing up" may be a prerequisite, but definitely not the same thing as "achievement". ... unless they give marks for mere attendance
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There's no evidence that certain demographics are actually better at computer science. The general barrier is desire; people who aren't white/asian males generally don't sign up for it. Those who do often complain that they're left out or ostracized.
When I was taking CS at college, there was one female CS major out of about fifteen. I don't actually know if she lacked opportunities - I was a returning student and didn't live on the campus, and when I talked to her I was usually talking about calculus rat
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"I doubt it's actually achievable"
Exactly. They're requiring the _results_ to have certain statistical properties. That means that if the provisional results were to have politically-incorrect correlations, they would have to be suppressed (e.g., by grading on different curves per identity-group demographic, or by offering different courses/evaluation). The "intersectionalism" of it all will make the post-facto compensation even trickier - good luck!) So long to a standard course, with standardized test
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That's a problem you have with any organization, really. It's all down to accountability.
Target metrics are pretty much a standard thing. You can argue their usefulness all day (educational experts do), but what it boils down to is that you have to have some way of making sure the schools are teaching the students properly.
The ideal is that students who were struggling would get help, regardless of any other factors. Bad instructors would be replaced. By looking at the metrics, principals, superintenden
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"The ideal is that students who were struggling would get help, regardless of any other factors."
So the implication here is that the only reason achievement would be different is because struggling students were denied help based on their demographics?
"very similar verbiage is applied all over the place"
To require "equal achievement"? Really? (And I was asking about the school system.)
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So the implication here is that the only reason achievement would be different is because struggling students were denied help based on their demographics?
In the 1980s and earlier, it would have been a valid assumption. But no, the implication is that not all students receive equal assistance and help from their peers or from home. That's certainly valid. The assumption, which I'll agree is unrealistic, is that the desire to learn is not reflective of any of those classifications. A good teacher can only do so much to interest a disinterested student, but there is correlation between demographics and the desire to learn.
To require "equal achievement"? Really? (And I was asking about the school system.)
I don't claim to be an expert on sc
Stupidity of Leadership (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously, learning to read, write and do basic math will be set aside for learning how to program.
Here is the problem, these people don't have a clue what is learned at what levels. And while I am all for teaching Computer science and such where it is profitable to do so, starting before kids can even write and do math is not "computer science" at all, it is just dick waving "hey look what I did for the kids!" political crap.
Here's an idea. Why not focus on reading, writing, math and building upon those at the appropriate times? And what about all those kids who don't want to be computer geeks, but rather artists, business people, biologists, doctors, lawyers etc? Are we going to build all those careers into our children's curriculum as well?
The fact is, factory learning is dead, we just don't know it yet. We have spent the last 250 years in factory schools, built using factory ideas to populate our factories with workers. Today, we need a change in how we educate people, so that they are ready for information jobs. This requires scrapping the "one size fits all" education model that is clearly dying (NCLB, Common Core etc), and replacing it with student paced education system where each student has a customized curriculum, based on ABILITY and WILLINGNESS to learn.
Re:Stupidity of Leadership (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stupidity of Leadership (Score:5, Insightful)
We have to get past "hurt feelings" when people are better than others. Unless you're the best ( which is temporary / fleeting), there is always someone better than you. Customized education allows each person to be exactly what they can and try to be. Nothing more, nothing less. It is the fairest of all approaches.
And given this approach, you might find we are selling a large number of our kids short.
Excellence knows no bounds. Mediocrity is bounded by failure.
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I thought that the "No Child Left Behind" thing meant keeping children who didn't achieve the required standard back a year, to repeat the same grade again while the other kids moved ahead. Has it changed?
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I thought that the "No Child Left Behind" thing meant keeping children who didn't achieve the required standard back a year, to repeat the same grade again while the other kids moved ahead. Has it changed?
I thought it meant lowering standards so that everyone can pass?
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/06/10/412240568/raising-graduation-rates-with-questionable-quick-fixes [npr.org]
http://www.joannejacobs.com/2014/05/illinois-sets-lower-standards-for-blacks-latinos [joannejacobs.com]
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I was placed in my school district's gifted program in second grade and also had the privilege of attending an invite-only school for gifted students during high school. Throughout my schooling there were instances where some parents were upset that resources were going to the gifted kids. According to their logic, the gifted kids were already doing well in school so why should they get extra resources when there are kids that are struggling. These parents were okay with the gifted kids being stuck in no
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> Here is the problem, these people don't have a clue what is learned at what levels.
Looking at the backgrounds of the board members [smartvoter.org], they seem to be a very good mix of teachers, people educated in teaching, a therapist, a pediatrician, PTA members...
> Why not focus on reading, writing, math and building upon those at the appropriate times?
Kids are using iPads at this age. Why not introduce them to the idea of how the devices they use actually work, from the very beginning? Especially when they live
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Kids are using iPads at this age.
Kids also use TVs at that age. We didn't say that kids should be Broadcast Engineering specialists.
This is pie-in-the-sky nonsense. Classroom teaching works, and is actually affordable.
Classroom teaching doesn't work. It holds people back to the slowest kid in the class. And we should be replacing Teachers with Learning systems, that adapt to the talents and needs of the kids using them, augmented by proctors who specialize in helping kids when they do struggle.
"Common Core" is just a series of education standards that proscribes a minimal level of education that children should achieve, before they (inevitably, nowadays) go on to college.
You are exactly right, and also oblivious to why that is inherently unworkable. The prescription given is "one size fits all" and th
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"Kids are using iPads at this age. Why not introduce them to the idea of how the devices they use actually work, from the very beginning?"
What for? Kids are using electrical ilumination at this age. Why not introduce them to the idea of how the devices they use actually work -high to low voltage, power thyristors and all that stuff, from the very beginning?
Hey, todlers are heavy users of the sewage system. Let's teach them that first too. They'll have the time to learn how to properly read, write and ba
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Obviously, learning to read, write and do basic math will be set aside for learning how to program.
It seems like you can't really learn to program without know basic reading, writing and maths skills. I think you have the wrong idea about what they will be teaching. It won't be coding, it will be simple logic and sequencing.
When I was about 3 years old I went to pre-school. It was mostly just playing, but one of the toys we had was a programmable vehicle called a Big Trak [wikipedia.org]. You could give it simple commands like "go forward 1m" or "turn left" and it would execute them in sequence. I was the first kid to p
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Obviously, learning to read, write and do basic math will be set aside for learning how to program.
Actually math and programming go together very well. It's a good way for young students to get introduced to ideas that they will encounter later in algebra. I got lucky and was able to learn Basic in 3rd grade back in the 1980's. I loved it and talked my parents into getting me a TSR-80 COCO II that summer. When I started algebra in school later on I quickly realized I already understood the basics of it because of the programming I had started doing years earlier. Concepts like variables, equations, and
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You are making my point, but using your life experiences. You learned, TRS-80 probably on your own, at your own pace, and what was beyond what was taught in school. What if, schools had access to all toys and such needed to have those experiences instead of being exclusive to home.
What if instead of paying teachers administrators etc, to the tune of $5000 per kid per year, we build learning systems that allowed kids to learn naturally at their own pace (as you did) doing things that interested them.
A real l
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To be honest, that kind of education is something schools cannot teach, at least not in the setup they currently have. Which is why schools are failing our kids.
And guess what else they learn when the play with rocks? Geology, Chemistry, Mathematics and probably start picking up bits of Latin. The best kind of learning is exploring.
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Obviously, learning to read, write and do basic math will be set aside for learning how to program.
Funny, I didn't read anything about that, and I can't imagine anyone seriously suggesting it.
Here is the problem, these people don't have a clue what is learned at what levels. And while I am all for teaching Computer science and such where it is profitable to do so, starting before kids can even write and do math is not "computer science" at all, it is just dick waving "hey look what I did for the kids!" political crap.
Depends on the curriculum. There are "computer science" concepts that can be taught at an early age, if your definition of the term is broad enough. My kid can't read yet, but can get around on the computer all right.
Here's an idea. Why not focus on reading, writing, math and building upon those at the appropriate times? And what about all those kids who don't want to be computer geeks, but rather artists, business people, biologists, doctors, lawyers etc? Are we going to build all those careers into our children's curriculum as well?
No one is suggesting throwing reading, writing, or math out the window. And as far as kids who don't want to be computer geeks - so what? I didn't want to be an athlete, but I still took gym. I did
Smart down kids (Score:2)
So kids with down syndrome should be just as capable?
Are those kids in a different group or is this plan very ambitious?
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"Special Needs" generally refers to physically handicapped kids or kids with a learning disability. In other words, they need to accommodate children who are deaf, blind, or dyslexic.
Kids with IQs below 72 tend to have their own curriculum and (around here, anyway) are not expected to keep up with the same standards as kids with normal intelligence.
Using computers != Computer Science (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, you should be teaching them basic algebra and logic skills that will be very applicable to many things in life. Absolutely teach them how to use a computer. All kinds of things can be done with that. Don't claim you are teaching them computer science.
I guess it really annoys me because it is like saying a TV repair man is an electrical engineer. Heck, that one is at least slightly closer than calling making a web page being a computer scientist....
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"Computer Science" is a misnomer anyway. Only .3% of it, even at a college level, involves applying the scientific method. Really it just involves knowing computer stuff and doing clever computer things. Why not teach that to children?
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Fixing things instead of buying new ones means you're stuck in old obsolete economy. We must all buy new things all the time or else the world will collapse.
I never use algebra!!! (Score:2)
> the racial demographics of the school district's 209 AP Computer Science
> participants (181 Asian, 0 African American, 6 Latino, 1 Native American, 14 White, 7 Other).
There is an opinion piece on CNN right now of a Asian guy screaming at Asian parents how rotten they are for doing this.
Well, somebody has to invent the new stuff and medicines you are indignantly voting for politicians to give you for free.
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I'd like to see a source for these numbers that you're using as an excuse to give us your political views.
"MissionLocal has a two-page SFUSD flyer on the project, which aims to illustrate the "importance of computer science" with the same Code.org jobs infographic that Microsoft used to help achieve its stated goal of creating a national K-12 CS crisis, and demonstrate "disparities in accessing CS education" for SFUSD's 57,000 students with a small-sample-size-be-damned bar chart of the racial demographics of the school district's 209 AP Computer Science participants (181 Asian, 0 African American, 6 Latino, 1 Native American, 14 White, 7 Other)."
Usually one reads the initial story before commenting.
The road to hell... (Score:3)
It is faaaaaar more beneficial to give preschoolers more time doing developmentally appropriate gross and fine motor tasks that sitting them down in front of a computer. The brain is wired by way of the body. If I wanted my kids to have more screen time, I could provide plenty at home. Most kids already spend too much time in front of a screen. They need to be outside, moving.
The most talented programmer I ever met didn't even touch a computer until he was in highschool — his youth was "squandered" outside playing games with his friends and reading books.
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If I wanted my kids to have more screen time, I could provide plenty at home. Most kids already spend too much time in front of a screen. They need to be outside, moving.
I'm seeing this with my 2 little kids. Screen time just leads them to want more screen time. I doubt you want this in preschool-age children. My 4-year-old started reading pretty early, and we've been working really hard to keep encouraging that rather than stuff him in front of a computer. Kids at this age need to learn motor skills, appr
Binary before arithmetic in preschools... (Score:2)
Not computer science, basic skills maybe? (Score:2)
I doubt they mean actually teaching Computer Science, even the concepts, to preschoolers.
Everyone points to this as a way to ensure the future supply of cheap labor for companies, and there's some truth to that. But, wouldn't you rather people have at least some exposure to the basics? I highly doubt anyone who wouldn't already be attracted to a CS-related career will be swayed by this, but introducing concepts earlier might intensify student focus in kids who are already interested.
IMO, this would help wit
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"I doubt they mean actually teaching Computer Science, even the concepts, to preschoolers."
Probably you are right.
Which means they shouldn't have any decision power on such curricular matters since they don't know what they are talking about.
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> Millenials are often touted as "technology gurus" and "digital natives" because of the fact that they grew up from birth with modern computers
IMO: knowing how to use Facebook, and how to take selfies, is not my idea of a technology guru.
Script-toddlers ... (Score:2)
These people (a) don't know what computer science means or (b) don't understand a thing about child development.
Even allowing for an incredibly overly generously broad definition of computer science, one that stops just short of clicking a mouse button or tapping on a screen, they're going to have an awfully hard time teaching pre-K children computer science. These people really ought to know that since there's a reason why schooling starts at age 5 or 6: very few children have reached a stage cognitive de
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It's arguably harmful to introduce small children to advanced computer technology. The skills they need are in the mind: social skills, reading skills, learning skills. Yes, you can teach people to learn; the brain is a huge collection of tools, like a wood-and-metal-working shop, and not knowing how any of them works will leave you churning out uselessly-rudimentary objects instead of furniture and machines. With those tools, you could learn everything about computers; with a rote-learned understandin
There are 10 kinds of pre-schoolers (Score:2)
There are 10 kinds of pre-schoolers. Those who've had enough nap time, and those who haven't.
I thought programming was supposed to be fun. (Score:5, Informative)
Making something "mandatory in all grades" breeds dislike. Young kids often like programming, (or math, or art, or language, or music) and understand right away that it can be fun. Then the schools mess it up. If you haven't read it, I recommend the essay known as Lockhart's Lament [maa.org]:
My wife, an educator, just heard me ranting and popped into the room: "Preschoolers need to play. That is the developmentally appropriate thing for them to be doing." She also reminded me that Steve Jobs didn't want his children looking at screens - he wanted them talking and reading.
Meanwhile in Silicon Valley... (Score:3)
will kids pass left behind, Common Core tests? (Score:2)
IMO: the term "computer science" is misused (Score:2)
Learning MS-Office is not learning "computer science" anymore than learning to use the copy machine is electrical engineering.
Maybe we should "computer usage skills" or something?
A course in algorithms is computer science, not learning to use MS-Windows.
There's Lies ... (Score:2)
damned lies, and statistics.
I am ever so NOT in love with our education system. I swear ...
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The best I can think of is a game where they must tell someone EXACTLY how to do something with any ambiguity done comically wrong. Naturally, the latter part gets more strictly interpreted over time. Later, perhaps mention that computers are like that. I have no idea how to make that "culturally relevant".
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After years of nagging my parents broke down and got me one of those cheap computer things that was little more than a keyboard and 1 line LCD display. I think the thing had a z80 or 6502 processor with 32kb ram but you couldn't save things when you turned it off. It was even worse than a TRS-80 model 100, that would have been a nice machine by comparison. It ran off of like 4 D cell batteries and you could buy
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The more puzzling thing is that they apparently want "achievement" to "not be predictable" on the basis of "special needs". How can you possibly ask that the "achievement" of a literally retarded student not be "predictable", unless you're not actually even measuring anything and are just rolling a die?