Should Schools Makes CS/Cybersecurity a High School Graduation Requirement? 128
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes Microsoft's friendly relationship with North Dakota, pointing out that in 2017 Microsoft's president Brad Smith said the company would provide the state "cash grants, technology, curriculum and resources to nonprofits" and also "partner with schools to strengthen their ability to offer digital skills and computer science education to the youth they serve."
"We just have such a good relationship with the community. We were also excited about Doug Burgum's election as governor. We had confidence that Doug, as governor, would bring a real focus on innovation that would focus on both changes in government and changes in technology." Before being elected Governor in 2016 (with the endorsement of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and financial backing from Bill Gates), former Microsoft exec Burgum sold his Fargo-based Great Plains Software business to Microsoft in 2002 for $1.1 billion and joined the software giant, where he reported directly to Steve Ballmer (a college friend) and managed Nadella (who became chief of Microsoft Business Solutions after Burgum's 2007 departure).
"We need a national movement for coding and computer science in our public schools [...] We need to influence, we need to support, we need to reform public policy as we're seeing here in North Dakota," Microsoft's Smith exhorted to TEDxFargo attendees in his return to North Dakota. "We need to make sure that computer science counts towards high school graduation." Mission accomplished. On Friday, North Dakota's governor Doug Burgum and School Superintendent Kirsten Baesler celebrated the governor's signing of HB1398, the Microsoft-supported bill which requires the teaching of computer science and cybersecurity and the integration of these content standards into school coursework from kindergarten through 12th grade. (Two of the ten members of North Dakota's K-12 CS and Cybersecurity Standards Review Committee were from Microsoft).
The superintendent said North Dakota is the first state in the nation to approve legislation requiring cybersecurity education. "Today is the culmination of years of work by stakeholders from all sectors to recognize and promote the importance of cybersecurity and computer science education in our elementary, middle and high schools," superintendent Baesler said at Friday's bill signing ceremony.
Baesler said EduTech, a division of bill supporter North Dakota Information Technology that provides IT support and professional development for K-12 educators, will be developing examples of cybersecurity and computer science education integration plans that may be used to assist local schools develop their own plans. EduTech is a Regional Partner of tech-backed nonprofit Code.org, which also voiced its support for HB1398. Code.org's Board of Directors include Microsoft President Brad Smith and CTO Kevin Scott.
Burgum, who joined Code.org's Governors Partnership for K-12 Computer Science in 2017, was also among 45 of the nation's State Governors who last July signed a Compact To Expand K-12 Computer Science Education in their states in response to a public letter from the CEOs for CS (including Microsoft's Nadella and Smith), part of a campaign organized by Code.org that called for state governments and education leaders to bring more CS to K-12 students to meet the future demands of the American workforce. Code.org has set a goal to make CS a high school graduation requirement for every student in all 50 states by the end of the decade.
"We need a national movement for coding and computer science in our public schools [...] We need to influence, we need to support, we need to reform public policy as we're seeing here in North Dakota," Microsoft's Smith exhorted to TEDxFargo attendees in his return to North Dakota. "We need to make sure that computer science counts towards high school graduation." Mission accomplished. On Friday, North Dakota's governor Doug Burgum and School Superintendent Kirsten Baesler celebrated the governor's signing of HB1398, the Microsoft-supported bill which requires the teaching of computer science and cybersecurity and the integration of these content standards into school coursework from kindergarten through 12th grade. (Two of the ten members of North Dakota's K-12 CS and Cybersecurity Standards Review Committee were from Microsoft).
The superintendent said North Dakota is the first state in the nation to approve legislation requiring cybersecurity education. "Today is the culmination of years of work by stakeholders from all sectors to recognize and promote the importance of cybersecurity and computer science education in our elementary, middle and high schools," superintendent Baesler said at Friday's bill signing ceremony.
Baesler said EduTech, a division of bill supporter North Dakota Information Technology that provides IT support and professional development for K-12 educators, will be developing examples of cybersecurity and computer science education integration plans that may be used to assist local schools develop their own plans. EduTech is a Regional Partner of tech-backed nonprofit Code.org, which also voiced its support for HB1398. Code.org's Board of Directors include Microsoft President Brad Smith and CTO Kevin Scott.
Burgum, who joined Code.org's Governors Partnership for K-12 Computer Science in 2017, was also among 45 of the nation's State Governors who last July signed a Compact To Expand K-12 Computer Science Education in their states in response to a public letter from the CEOs for CS (including Microsoft's Nadella and Smith), part of a campaign organized by Code.org that called for state governments and education leaders to bring more CS to K-12 students to meet the future demands of the American workforce. Code.org has set a goal to make CS a high school graduation requirement for every student in all 50 states by the end of the decade.
Should Question Headlines be no? (Score:4)
Answer every question headline with No.
save time.
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Eventually they will get wise and start rewording their headlines accordingly. This one becomes:
"Should high schools continue to leave CS / Cybersecurity classes out of their graduation requirements?"
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They likely will or have already been using AI to generate headlines. The purpose is to increase clicks which means LESS reading and zero logic; avoid negations too so playing lawyer games with phrasing runs counter to their marketing goals.
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Answer this one with 'no' because its a stupid idea.
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Should Schools Makes . . .
I think schools should makes English a requirement for writing headlines.
Start with a personal finance class requirement. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Start with a personal finance class requirement (Score:5, Insightful)
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I actually agree with this AC.
Most kids fresh out of high school can't manage their own money so they continually mooch off parents for large sums of cash even while in college.
Learning how to cook, even basic stuff, has been so beneficial to me. When I am home I save money by not eating from take-aways or having it delivered to me.
Learning how to do home repairs is another life skill worth learning. Basic stuff like running toilets...so simple.
Add to that list the basics of car maintenance - what to look f
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Most kids fresh out of high school can't manage their own money so they continually mooch off parents for large sums of cash even while in college.
Problem is, below a certain income level you're just going to be broke all the time no matter what. This scene [getyarn.io] sums it up nicely. Now, that's not to say it isn't useful making sure kids do understand how to manage money once they start earning amounts that can be managed, but when your entire income goes to your living expenses and you still need to buy books and a pair of new shoes, yeah, the parents are gonna get hit up for some help.
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Their lack of understanding of the financial matters has enabled them to take on $100,000+ in college debt and having no idea how to pay it back.
The failings of the public school system are manifest all around us, and the solutions are so simple - fire ineffective teachers, offer parents school choice, and let the taxpayers review the curriculums their children are being taught. Consigning education to the "professionals" has failed countless children, it's time for the parents to get involved in their chil
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Their lack of understanding of the financial matters has enabled them to take on $100,000+ in college debt and having no idea how to pay it back.
The failings of the public school system are manifest all around us, and the solutions are so simple - fire ineffective teachers, offer parents school choice, and let the taxpayers review the curriculums their children are being taught. Consigning education to the "professionals" has failed countless children, it's time for the parents to get involved in their children's education.
Oh please. Parents already have every opportunity to be involved in their children's education. Taxpayers have a say in the curriculum via school board elections. Maybe they should pay attention to what they're voting for.
The failure of the American education system is not due to the "professionals" in the teaching industry but the politicians earning hundreds of thousands of dollars who ignore those professionals making less than 100k. Firing ineffective teachers sounds simple, but how are you determini
Re:Start with a personal finance class requirement (Score:5, Insightful)
These used to be taught in a class called Home Economics. Basically it was a practical class on well, life. It taught basic skills of survival - how to cook a basic meal, how to do your taxes, basic personal finance - budgeting, credit, etc. It was the class that of all the classes in school, probably taught you the most about life in general.
It should be brought back, and later school years teach you more advanced topics, including gun handling and safety (sorry, this needs to be taught to everyone, gun lover or not), basic car maintenance (e.g., what the lights mean, what the various fluids do, etc, the stuff not taught in driver's ed). And yes, it should include stuff on cybersecurity - personal cybersecurity like not reusing passwords, how to spot phishing attacks or scams, etc/
And perhaps at the end in high school, topics like marriage, buying a house, more finance topics like getting a mortgage and a loan. And things like emergencies (power line goes down, medical emergencies, etc). Even skills like how to connect things together - you get a DVD player how do you hook it to your TV? (honestly, a skill I've seen people fail at).
Even skills like what happens if you're arrested by the police, what your rights are, and how to act in front of a judge.
Basically a class that teaches you about life, that has no instruction manual. It's all gathered under "home economics" because you can't make a whole class out of it, but it's stuff you should know to get through life. It won't make you a chef, or a programmer, or a mechanic, but it should give you enough basic life skills to figure out what to do if something happens.
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All the topics mentioned here are important, and to a large extent were taught in public schools, until we started thinking that "every student needs to go to college" and public schools de-emphasized the "practical arts" like wood/metal/auto shop, home economics, etc. Apparently the thinking was by eliminating those classes they could better prepare students to go on to college - instead colleges are now forced to increase their "remedial" english, math class offerings to help teach the students these basi
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The people struggling with money typically don't have time to cook or do more than basic home repairs. In the UK, most first time homebuyers rely on their parents for a significant part of their deposit. Not because they are not good at saving, but because houses are insanely expensive and the ratio of wages to house prices has been getting worse for decades.
On top of that the younger ones have severe climate change to look forward too, because we certainly aren't going to avoid it.
Things are measurably wor
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Well for most of us, that's not true. Sure, if you make 6 figures, it may be a waste of time to cook and do your own shopping, but the "average" American would benefit a great deal from knowing how to cook for themselves.
Re: Start with a personal finance class requiremen (Score:2)
So really, bring back home economics classes.
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Sadly even home economics is mostly gone now? What about shop class? BTW everyone was required to take home economics and shop class, both boys and girls took each.
Re: Start with a personal finance class requireme (Score:1)
Some private schools, at least back when I still attended had shop classes and home economics as electives. But even then those were the exception, not the norm. Iâ(TM)m guessing budget reallocations and/or potential lawsuits from parents killed off these electives for the most part. It seems mostly like a rich kids thing nowadays.
My school in particular had an electronics elective where we got to play with breadboards, LEDs, and soldering irons for an hour a day. Nothing quite like flinging melting ir
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I was required to take Shop class in high school, many years ago. It was worthless. They taught us how to use heavy equipment that we would never own, like table saws and welders and such. Projects included making things like metal toolboxes and wooden mirror-holders and clipboards.
Conspicuously absent from any of this was anything practical like: how to install a light switch, or wire up a thermostat, or diagnose a failed water heater, or fix a leaky faucet, or basically anything at all that might be a
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Schools used to require two years, for both boys and girls. It didn't seem to make much of a difference. The real problem isn't kids having enough money and using it foolishly, it's that they don't have enough money in the first place thanks to 40+ years of stagnant wages and the steady erosion of workers rights.
It doesn't take all that long to show kids how to balance a checkbook and make a household budget. What is that? A week of class time at most? You don't need a class for that, you need an assem
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Sorry but I was taught how to manage money and earning it. I didn't get an allowance but rather got paid for chores. Sure, you can say it amounts to the same thing and I couldn't not do those chores but definitely helped instill that you need to "work" to get ahead. Savings and understand credit was also very useful to understand.
Many kids just don't understand the repercussions of abusing credit and not having any kind of savings. Of course, many adults don't know these things either so naturally they can'
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Sorry but I was taught how to manage money and earning it.
Congratulations, I guess?
Re: Start with a personal finance class requireme (Score:2)
Schools used to require two years, for both boys and girls. It didn't seem to make much of a difference. The real problem isn't kids having enough money and using it foolishly, it's that they don't have enough money in the first place thanks to 40+ years of stagnant wages and the steady erosion of workers rights.
I really doubt that. Some people are naturally more patient, and have a natural tendency to be more judicious about their spending. When I was in the Army, right after finishing OSUT I noticed most people around me just spent most of their pay almost immediately after getting it. And we were all under basically the same circumstances:
- Same or similar rank, same or similar pay.
- All of our basic life necessities were already covered by the Army: Food, housing, health care, uniforms, you name it.
Those who we
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The great thing about living in your head rent-free is all the empty space.
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Rent Free
Kid's don't need personal finance classes (Score:1)
You can't money mange your way out of poverty. That's a myth meant to shift the blame for low pay and poor social structures onto individuals while the multinationals run out the back door with all your money.
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Bullshit. I did it.
No you didn't (Score:2)
I did the same thing. Was nearing bankruptcy when I landed a solid paying gig. Great if you can do it. Not everyone can. If, for example, you're stuck in the rust belt or deep south and the "wrong" sort of person (no points for guessing what that is) then you're just boned.
Re: Kid's don't need personal finance classes (Score:2)
Re: Kid's don't need personal finance classes (Score:2)
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There's a problem with your post (Score:3)
We literally have an entire political party rallying against critical thinking. And that's before the ticking time bomb that is home schooling goes off (e.g. millions of kids massively under educated by at best well meaning but completely unqualified parents). And *that's* before we talk about how we use property taxes to underfund schools in poor neighborhoods.
You might as well just ask "Why don't the poor just buy more money?".
Re: Kid's don't need personal finance classes (Score:2)
"Mental tools"
Awesome. I'll sue my employer because he didn't address me by my "rock" pronoun.
Slip 'n fall at Walmart is for old folks.
Re: Kid's don't need personal finance classes (Score:2)
Understanding personal finance is the difference between earning a middle class income and living middle class as opposed to earning a middle class income and living in poverty.
Just because there are other economic issues we should also concern ourselves with does not invalidate the benefits personal finance classes could provide.
Again, doesn't matter how well you understand it (Score:2)
Nobody likes hearing this. Nobody likes the cold hard reality of what we do to the poor. Or that it's getting worse, not better. Not because they care. They don't. But because nobody likes to stop and think they're one minor illness or a few rounds of layoffs and age discrimination away from poverty.
But not you, with you're personal fiance skills you're only a temporarily inconvenienced millionaire. O
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Sorry, I disagree. You can't just stay at a minimum wage job and think it's going to work out. I've never broke 60k yet I can live alone in San Diego AND save money every month. Stop living beyond your means and stop with all the excuses. I grew up pretty darn poor as well. Hard work is what gets you ahead, not government handouts.
Re: Kid's don't need personal finance classes (Score:1)
You can't money mange your way out of poverty.
I did.
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Why are we discussing adding topics to graduation requirements when so many schools fail to graduate students that can do math at grade level?
In a recent year (post-covid) the Baltimore school district had 23 schools where not one student in the building was able to do math at grade level. There were 20 other schools that had no more than 2 (two) students that could do math at grade level... Graduation Requirements need to actually matter - a high school diploma shouldn't become a participation award.
Link:
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should lock-smithing be High School requirement? (Score:2)
I don't think so. Computer Science -- same as answer as a Math requirement, but special focus areas like home security? Neh...
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Basic math yeah, adding subtraction, multiplication algebra sure, these are basic understanding that means you won't get screwed over in life, and be able to get on in life. If you don't know how to program Hello World, (leave that dangerous stuff to the professionals 8-). you will live be just fine.
Sure people can hack you, but really it comes done to don't trust people and use some common sense, most hacks come down to psychological manipulation. It all comes down to don't run stuff you don't trust. A bet
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So you believe everyone should know how to create and verify their own home and car locks in order to live safely?
In our society, we usually higher a locksmith to handle that for us. If everyone knows how to pick a lock and the theories there-of it makes the locks that much easier to pick. in many states, the possession of lock picking tools is illegal.
How educated are you about how different ciphers and encryption algorithms work -- and are you able to create your own algorithms safely to protect yoursel
What? No. (Score:3)
Those subjects are too big for high school. High school students should learn computer literacy and have maybe one class on programming. I had some BASIC in elementary school, and some LOGO in Jr. High, but I suspect the former was an unusual experience, and the latter certainly was as it was both elective and poorly attended. But I really don't know what kind of exposure kids are getting to programming today. They should get some, just so they can have a leg up on understanding how computers work. Everything is computerized now, it makes sense to have some kind of grip on them.
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some LOGO in Jr. High, but I suspect the former was an unusual experience
LOGO is usually associated with younger kids, but I don't think it was all that unusual in the 80's. There's a lot that middle-school kids can get out of LOGO that wouldn't be a little beyond the average 4th grader.
BASIC programs in math books were pretty common as well. It's a real shame there isn't anything like that these days. I have some books on my shelf aimed at teaching programming concepts, using BASIC, for early elementary kids. They're essentially story books punctuated with short type-in pro
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Cybersecurity is a fast-moving target, learning it in HS, then going off to college for four years studying law, or medicine, or science, teaching, engineering, whatever will render whatever "cybersecurity" you were taught in HS obsolete, AKA a waste of time.
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You aren't teaching state of the are cyber security. You are teaching about oversharing data, not clicking on suspect links, the perils of using "public" terminals, safe wifi practices, how to identify fraud and common techniques fraudsters use, the difference between http and https, and basic things like that that will NOT be obsolete in 10+ years.
Why bother? (Score:3, Funny)
vendor locking is bad why not Linux? (Score:2)
vendor locking is bad why not Linux?
Why should MS be pushing this bill? also no apple?
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Apple has education market locked-up, why throw money down this hole?
Why? They'll just forget it (Score:2)
make workers, not well rounded people (Score:5, Interesting)
Just in case you didn't know, life is more than just "work". You might find value, interest, and enrichment from knowing more than just "coding". I for one appreciate and practice art and music and my life would be impoverished without it.
We, as a society, appear to have lost the appreciation of anything but money... and good looks of course. How else would influencers survive?
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I feel it's gone to other way, with many courses in the US curriculum focussed on liberal arts BS. Just teach STEM, the rest of the skills can be learned outside school. If you like music or painting or whatever do classes after school or learn it online.
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I feel it's gone to other way, with many courses in the US curriculum focussed on liberal arts BS. Just teach STEM, the rest of the skills can be learned outside school. If you like music or painting or whatever do classes after school or learn it online.
I'd venture a guess we're not too far off from mediocre coders being replaced with ChatGPT or its derivatives. In all likelihood, the jobs that are going to see the most demand in the future are the ones that can't be easily automated, so pushing STEM hard on people who don't have an aptitude for it probably isn't the best idea.
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You "feel" that way, but that's not the reality. As for your attitude to anything that isn't STEM, you're just highlighting your critical lack of education.
Re: make workers, not well rounded people (Score:1)
You, of all people, have no room to judge somebody else's education.
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What is your weird obsession with me? It's creepy and weird.
Seek help before you hurt yourself.
Re: make workers, not well rounded people (Score:1)
You've already hurt yourself it seems. You can't seem to stop falling on your own sword.
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In the US, STEM is being replaced with STEAM, which adds "Art" to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math - in other words, they made STEM into STEAM, and now it is all-inclusive, AKA meaningless.
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I was watching an old (original) Twilight Zone episode, and in it the main character had to learn about a topic he was ignorant about, so he had to go to a book store and ask the clerk what they had on the topic... Imagine that, learning topics from actual printed books!
Nowadays we would just "google it" and accept the top response as factual.
Progress!
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As opposed to reading the only book in the store on some subject, and accepting *it* as factual, you mean?
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Computer class shouldn't try to turn kids into proficient programmers, just like shop class doesn't turn out master carpenters, and physics class doesn't make one a scie
No! (Score:5, Insightful)
the 3 R's (Score:2)
RRR was an amazing movie but did have a lot of violence. It may teach kids to use tigers for violence.
The final exam (Score:2)
to graduate they have to hack in and change their grade.
Re: The final exam (Score:2)
Trying to run before learning to walk. (Score:1)
Maybe they should be able to do basic math, and read and write, before trying to make CS/cybersecurity a high school grad requirement.
CS and Cybersecurity? (Score:2)
CS like "this is the Word icon" and cybersecurity like "don't open the attachment when the email says your package won't be delivered until you do"? Absolutely. No teacher should graduate from high school without that kind of basic knowledge.
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No teacher should graduate from high school without that kind of basic knowledge.
You're no longer allowed to have an opinion on education.
Re: CS and Cybersecurity? (Score:1)
Says the guy who admits to licking boots.
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You're either confused, illiterate, or both. I'm betting on 'both'. I accused you of being a bootlicker [dictionary.com].
If you're still having trouble, find a grown-up to explain what that term means to you.
Re: CS and Cybersecurity? (Score:1)
And as I've told you, despite your accusations I've never done any such thing. But you did confess to doing it yourself, remember? Specifically you said you were tired of getting kicked in the face afterwards.
https://slashdot.org/thread/62... [slashdot.org]
How many more times are you going to keep falling on your own sword?
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The requested URL (thread/62410086) was not found.
You're nothing but lying trash.
Pathetic. Go find someone else to obsess over.
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OMG, how stupid are you? Learn to read you drooling moron.
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Aren't you the guy who proudly admitted to being a line worker? You're projecting again. It's pathetic.
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How selective could they be if they hired you? Your username just screams 'incel'.
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Wow, I actually feel bad for you. I'm sure that won't last long.
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Fair point. Exhibit A: OpenAI Admits ChatGPT Leaked Some Payment Data, Blames Open-Source Bug [slashdot.org]
Re: Better question: "Why is this basic knowledge? (Score:2)
"The computer is supposed to know better than thou in every other respect, why does it need hand-holding regarding emails and malicious word documents?"
Gmail is an example of "the computer knows better than thou" and now you can't send .zip attachments as a result. No matter how safe and benign the attachment is. And renaming the zip file does not work either.
I don't want or need my computer to "know better" than me. I need my computer to do what I fucking tell it to do. I'll take responsibi
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almost as common a /. tradition... (Score:2)
as the bi-annual argument over DST.
Seriously, we were talking about 'computer literacy' requirements in the early 90s, even before the WWW and public access to the internet. Here on /. it is pretty much an annual thing.
To quote the guy from Matrix 2, "we have become exceedingly good at it."
Yes and No. LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
As part of some course teach critical thinking and how to spot when things look too good to be true. Things like single point of failure, learning from others' mistakes instead of having to always make your own first, instill the desire to continue learning after school so they'll keep up with changes. Etc.
The problem with 'teaching security' as with most things people want to teach, is that they teach the specific security issue of the day. Like 20 years ago it was more likely that 'real hackers' could exploit something in Outlook or wherever to gain control. Now the security issue that is mostly likely to cause problems is phishing/socially engineered hacks. Who knows what it will be 20 years from now? If you teach kids the ability to learn, think critically, instill the desire to keep learning, and then teach the history of computer security issues and that they will evolve over time, then they will be better off than today.
But right now, there is a lot of pushing to underachieve and not think critically. The whole bullshit, it is better to feel than think group. Or the idiots who think school is bad for you. Hollywood and other entertainment centres using science and science lovers the butt of jokes, etc. If I had to choose, I think it is more important to kill that bullshit than 'teach security'. Of course the two are not mutually exclusive, but if society continues to move to underachieving, you won't be able to teach anything requiring logic or critical thinking, or even that learning is good.
So many things need fixing in these areas.
...No? (Score:2)
High schools fail at teaching computing *now*.
Let's keep it as simple as word processors. How many students who are taught [MS Word | Google Docs | Apple Pages | LibreOffice] could take their final exam in WordPerfect and do the tasks, rather than act like recent versions of WordPerfect don't perform the exact same tasks in a generally-similar-UI and complain that it was the teacher's fault? ...now you want to add cybersecurity to the mix, as if the topic isn't going to end up being a bottomless well of oth
I feel sorry for the teachers in my old home state (Score:2)
I know everyone's debating the whole, "Should CompSci be a required course" question, but let's look at it from from a different angle.
North Dakota has a critical shortage of teachers in every subject area throughout the state. [nd.gov] In the last school year, 167 teaching vacancies went unfilled, and another 330 were "irregularly filled." [newsnationnow.com] It is such an acute shortage that many towns and cities there are hiring Filipinos to fill the vacancy [inforum.com].
At a time when this state cannot get enough teachers just to teach the sta
No. (Score:2)
No more than they should make 'car repair' a graduation requirement.
CS and cybersecurity are, like car repair, something best left to specialist technicians as needed, not something Average Joe/Josephinas need to know.
life skills, including consumer economics (Score:4, Insightful)
Schools should have a course that teaches 'life skills' including consumer economics (how to calculate future value of an investment, how to calculate the cost of a loan at a given interest rate, both monthly payments and total interest payments), basic investment approaches ("Compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn't, pays it." said Einstein https://www.goodreads.com/quot... [goodreads.com] ) Also understanding the value and risks of one's personal data, social media "hygiene", etc. Consumer protection, how to effectively file a complaint with both a company and with consumer protection agencies. Lots of stuff like that I wished I learned in high school. And cyber security.
Of course, for some this means "How to use Microsoft products" since for way too many the problems with Microsoft Windows, etc are equivalent to 'computing'. That's something that should be part of curriculum development. Dealing with the "elephant in the room" as well as teaching that "Microsoft is not the only game in town."
Me, I'm kinda sick of the whole notion that Computer Science has now become post-facto Cyber Security. Instead of teaching developers (at all levels) how to protect their code, we're spending lots of $$$ in teaching them how to protect us against the bugs that shouldn't have been there in the first place. Let's separate that from "life skills" as part of well rounded education.
I'm not sold on "Cybersecurity" in this context (Score:2)
CS is more like a shop class, SC ore like safety (Score:2)
Cybersecurity seems like a much harder fit as a good graduation requirement than CS.
I see it the opposite. Cyber security a topic in a required health and safety class or a required computer literacy class. Just a topic, as you said, it seems too much for a full class, at least a required class. Perhaps an optional "shop" class that is a computer administration sort of class. Computer science is also such an optional "shop" class. "Shop" classes being something that perhaps you take to see if there is any interest in, and if so, you take more. Like the wood shop and auto shop classes of ol
CS No Cyber Security Yes (Score:2)
Cyber Security, yes, it can be a topic in a health and safety class, which are typically required. Or perhaps put it into the computer literacy class which should also be required.
Corporate bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't see people demanding kids learn double-entry accounting in high school. You don't see them demand kids learn construction, or general engineering, or biomedical engieering. But you do see them push for programming and security.
The reason why is obvious. Tech companies make billions of dollars. And powering those companies *currently* requires skilled US workers. And those same tech companies have a lot of money to pass out to politicians, who think constantly about how they can claim to create jobs.
But the truth is, most tech jobs aren't going to advancing science or medicine or engineering. No; most tech jobs go towards entertainment and advertising. Building better distractions to sell to a pampered and skillless class.
Most Americans today can't grow a radish, assemble a table, fix a faucet, or sew a hole in their clothes. Instead the solution is to just buy it, cheap, from overseas. With no thought to the day that eventually we can't support this pampered class with aggressive trade deals and massive investment in health care and entertainment and frivolous consumerism.
So, sure, teach kids to program. So they can continue to build up a sham economy and depend ever more on other nations. It'll put money in the pockets of the richest and keep everyone happy. Until finally the well is tapped dry, and the rest of the world no longer needs us to feed from globalism's teets.
Personally, if I were a kid in high school, because I was a computer nerd, I would have loved getting those classes. But as an adult now, I wish more than anything that I'd instead been taught more varied life skills, and encouraged to take a working class job outside using my hands. Nobody wanted me to be a programmer because I didn't want to go to college; turns out college is for suckers. But so is programming, once you realize where the fruits of your labor goes.
- training for the jobs of yesterday - (Score:2)
Breezing thru the numbers at Code.org, it seems we'll soon have more than 1 billion young programmers. What will they do with the remaining 80 years of their life when chatbots have taken over 90% of software development?
Many will not even graduate from high school before the chatbots begin their reign.
Job training is important for many young people, but an education is also important. Jobs come and go and may soon become redundant. An education is forever. That means reading, math, biology etc and the huma
Re: (Score:2)
No. Obviously. (Score:2)
These are complex, demanding subjects that require a specific type of interest and talent. At the same time, they have very limited value for the average graduate. Hence making them a requirement would mean making them easy enough that most could pass which makes them basically worthless for everybody. The whole idea would do nothing except waste time and resources.
Basic computer use (Score:2)
Teach them basic computer use first, folders, files, organization. So many are missing the basics. Teach them to format documents/text. Go nuts and teach them to spot phishing email, teach them basic computer hygiene. Leave CS and Security to those with real interest.
No!!!! (Score:2)
With schools taking algebra off the rubric why should they put computer security on it? The vast majority of society expects all technology to be "appliance" like. Let the 1% of nerds that are into this stuff be the ones learning it. Offer the class but it shouldn't be required to graduate.
Algebra and English, now those should be required.
Should Schools Makes Grammer A Requirement? (Score:2)
Until you can write a basic English sentence, don't ask about adding requirements.
Everything is chemistry! (Score:2)
This is what a high schoo chem teacher actually said, implying that chemical reactions run the world. Of course, in a reductionist view this makes sense, like it will also for physics, math, language, etc, depending on your point of view (and mostly on your background).
Of course, "disciplinary reductionism" is tempting and a main source for most claims of "X is essential, we should teach it to everyone". But there is an additional underlying assumption that gives rise to these claims: individualism. In a w
WTF... (Score:2)
At this point, though, there should be a serious talk about classes on how to set a secure password, why to use 2FA and avoid fatigue attacks, and how not to trust "Microsoft" support reps with a heavy Indian accent calling you out of nowhere and asking you to log into your bank account and let them remote into your computer.
I thought it was mostly old people falling for this crap, but so many people I run into getting scammed are 20s and 3
Universal answer (Score:2)
Universal answer to every headline that asks a question: NO.