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Education Programming

New Michigan Law Requires High Schools to Offer CS Classes (michigan.gov) 59

Posted by EditorDavid from the if-else-loop dept.
The state of Michigan will now require each public high school in the state to offer at least one computer science course to its students. "This bill aligns Michigan with a majority of the country," according to the state's announcement, which says the bill "advances technological literacy" and ensures their students "are well-equipped with the critical thinking skills necessary for success in the workforce."

Slashdot reader theodp writes: From the Michigan House Fiscal Agency Analysis: "Supporters of the bill say that increasing access to computer science courses for students in schools should be a priority of the state in order to ensure that students can compete for the types of jobs that have good pay and will be needed in the coming decades."

That analysis goes on to report that testifying in favor of the bill were tech-giant backed nonprofit Code.org (Microsoft is a $30 million Code.org donor), Amazon and AWS (Amazon is a $30+ million Code.org donor), the tech-supported Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), and the lobbying organization TechNet, whose members include Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and OpenAI).
It's not clear how many high schools in Michigan are already teaching CS courses, but this still raises a popular question for discussion. Should high schools be required to teach at least one CS course?

New Michigan Law Requires High Schools to Offer CS Classes More | Reply

New Michigan Law Requires High Schools to Offer CS Classes

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  • but what counts as CS will typing classes cover that?

    • Re:but what counts as CS will typing classes cover (Score:5, Informative)

      by theodp ( 442580 ) on Sunday January 26, 2025 @12:52PM (#65119951)

      Still plenty of wiggle room, but from HB5649 [mi.gov]: "Computer science" means the study of computers and algorithmic processes, including, but not limited to, their principles, hardware and software designs, implementation, and impact on society, and is a study that focuses on teaching students how to create new technologies and not solely the use of technology.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MacMann ( 7518492 )

      but what counts as CS will typing classes cover that?

      I thought much the same thing.

      When I was in high school there was a typing class, a "Computer I" class, and a "Computer II" class, and I took all three. The typing class had some kind of IBM/Windows/MS-DOS computers for us to learn typing with. Much of the class was on typing but some was on what I'd consider basic "computer literacy", as in how to operate a computer. The Computer I class was almost all about computer literacy, we had sections on word processing, spreadsheets, graphics, and at the end so

    • Exactly. I'm generally opposed to CS classes in high school because they usually are nonsense like Microsoft Office and typing, etc. rather than anything remotely similar to CS.

      It would be better to offer more advanced math, especially discrete math.

  • When I was in high school 25 years ago in a middle class suburb just over the Philadelphia city limits, the "computer" class was one web design elective taught as an afterthought by one of the physics teachers. Actual AP CS was offered, but it was taught off-campus at the same vocational school that taught autoshop and cosmetology. Pretty sure there were exactly zero takers.

    Some of my parents' friends kids were a few years older than me, and for whatever reason at one point I got a look at some of their mat

    • the exact same result across close to three generations now: maybe 1 in 10 will bite, and that 1 in 10 will usually seek it out on their own. Having it in the schools is nice, I suppose, but it ain't no magic bullet.

      Having introduction to computer science in schools at least encourages an interested teen's parents to make a general-purpose computer available to the teen, as opposed to something like a phone, tablet, game console, or Chromebook whose operating system can't usefully run a compiler. In at least three software development communities on Discord, I've seen questions to the effect "how can I do this on a school- or parent-issued Chromebook or phone until I become 18 and old enough to work?" or "I tried to in

      • Back in the 90s, almost all consumer PCs would come with the equivalent of a chromebook interface. If you wanted a compiler, you usually had to shell out hard currency for Borland or Visual Studio or something else.

        MSDOS came with QBasic, windows would let you play with javascript and html out of the box, and maybe you could get your hands on a lightweight interpreted language for small money or off the internet. Over dialup.

        The players may change but the performance and the stage stay the same.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          Back in the 90s, almost all consumer PCs would come with the equivalent of a chromebook interface.

          But not cryptographically locked down to run only a web browser.

          If you wanted a compiler, you usually had to shell out hard currency for Borland or Visual Studio or something else.

          Starting in the late 1990s, GCC became more widely available, even to those not yet ready to run the comparatively rudimentary GNU/Linux systems of the time, in the forms of DJGPP and MinGW.

          maybe you could get your hands on a lightweight interpreted language for small money or off the internet. Over dialup.

          You could buy a CD, or load up a Zip disk or a CD-R at a local public library.

          The players may change but the performance and the stage stay the same.

          Which still isn't an excuse to revert to the pre-1999 state of things.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rossdee ( 243626 )

          "Back in the 90s, almost all consumer PCs would come with the equivalent of a chromebook interface. If you wanted a compiler, you usually had to shell out hard currency for Borland or Visual Studio or something else."

          Back in the early '90s those of us using Amiga computers could get freeware/shareware compilers and stuff on Fish disks and Aminet.
          (with source code).

        • As I recall the 1990s if someone wanted to get started in computer programming then a text editor and a web browser meant someone could at least experiment with JavaScript. While not exactly a fully featured programming language or development environment it builds skills that can transfer elsewhere. I'm basically repeating some points of the parent post here.

          Then there were various scripting languages that people could learn to build some skills in programming. I recall the LAMP software stack being a t

      • >> Chromebook whose operating system can't usefully run a compiler.

        are you sure about that? you can install and run MS visual studio code. visual studio code isn't a word processor.

    • Some people enjoy programming, many of the people posting here are among them.

      Being paid to do what you enjoy doing makes for a good life.

    • The magic bullet would be teaching numerical computing before teaching calculus so we can stop asking kids to memorize integrals. Career prep is not the point. Nobody looks at gym class saying "you aren't going to ever make a career out of that".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bento ( 19178 )
      Similarly to the parent I learned to program about 33 years ago in junior high. We had a couple of different "computer skill" tracks available which included a keyboarding (touch typing [PAWS] and math games [Math Blaster]) starting in second or third grade (can't quite remember anymore) and later programming (in BASIC taught by one of the math instructors), and a skills class which taught word processing and spreadsheet type skills. These were all taught in one of the computer labs on our campus using the

    • Out of my graduating class, maybe 10% elected to go to college to study something that at least peripherally necessitated knowing how to code. The rest went on to pre-med, pre-law, business, art or literature where knowing how to operate a calculator or a spreadsheet was sufficient preparation for all the computations required in the discipline. Many of those people are quite successful 20+ years on.

      For some reason this made me think of the value in learning statistics.

      I didn't have a proper education in statistics until I decided to use some GI Bill benefits to go back to university to get an education in large data analysis. To complete the program I needed to take four statistics courses, an introductory course, two intermediate level courses, and then the capstone course. I didn't finish the program but by taking the introductory course I learned plenty on how news articles and such can lie with

  • When all the entry level coding jobs are going to H1Bs
    • There's still a handful of jobs that Americans get because even though Musk and Trump are bringing in as many H1B's as they can get they can't go all nuclear like Canada did and bring in enough to raise our population by 10 or 15%. That would be too obvious to maga. They've got to bring them in slowly at the 65,000 rate per year and then have a long track to get them citizenship. Basically like boiling a frog only a frog is smart enough to get the fuck out of the water.

      So they want to have lots and lots

    • Yeah, those 60k H1Bs each year are taking all the jobs from the 4.4 million software developers. Sure.

      • I'm on a team with ten developers. Four are from India. Four are from China. A team with 80% of the people from Asia should be statistically impossible given our country's demographics. But, it's real. And, it's not unusual in tech.
    • In the future, all the programming jobs will go to AI. Between now and then, there's no reason any American should learn coding.

      • There will be work in checking AI-generated code and fixing errors. Any self-starter armed with a tool like Cursor may be able to crank out some pretty cool projects in only a few man hours. But yeah in terms of getting a job to write code from the ground up, there will be fewer of those and they will demand more talent.

  • I took a course in programming (Score:3)

    by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Sunday January 26, 2025 @01:00PM (#65119965)
    Fortran on an IBM 1130 with punch cards and a chain drive line printer. While Fortran is a bit dated, the principles of structuring a program, logic flow, etc. are still relevant today.

    I suspect several things will happen:

    • Schools will have some generic "CS' class that is a broad survey class of little value
    • They won't be able to hire and retain teachers who are really skilled in CS, given they can make ore with less BS elsewhere

    Politicians and administration will pat themselves on their backs for giving students relevent skills

    • This isn't about relative skills this is about trying to flood what's left of the IT job market with cheap labor to drive down wages.

      Fortunately that's not a problem for anyone here because every single one of us is a genius who happens to spend their time reading a 20-year-old tech news website instead of doing anything with our genius.

      • This isn't about relative skills this is about trying to flood what's left of the IT job market with cheap labor to drive down wages. Fortunately that's not a problem for anyone here because every single one of us is a genius who happens to spend their time reading a 20-year-old tech news website instead of doing anything with our genius.

        That's because no one understands our genius except our mothers. That reminds me, it's dinner time cause I hear footsteps on teh basement stairs and I am hungry...

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by KC0A ( 307773 )
        I don't think this will produce a lot of professional software developers. Currently a large fraction of MSCS graduates can't program. Almost no high school students can write a simple geometry proof. Adding a class won't change this.

      • Wow that's autobiographical isn't it?

  • You can teach computer science (Score:3)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Sunday January 26, 2025 @01:05PM (#65119979)

    And not ever touch a computer.

    • The quote you're looking for: "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." - Edsger Dijkstra

      • You know...astronomy is a *lot* about telescopes. Many of those telescopes cost billions of dollars to build and operate, and the people paid to build and operate on them usually care about the gizmo more than they care about the armchair theoreticians using the data from the gizmo.

  • ...It takes a special kind of mind to be good at programming and not all can do it. Talent is real.
    That said, learning a bit about the basics is a good thing

    • My thoughts as well. A survey course is useful as long as expectations and outcomes are understood. Programming as a career will be an option for some but for many/most it will reinforce them not being a good âoefitâ for the industry.
  • and wondered why this is happening now..

    Since teachers no nothing about computer, programming, etc, the kids will be taught by "AI".
    Then since "AI" is going to replace most programmers whether it works or not, then there seems to be less and less reason to know anything about technology.

    We'd all be better off if the kids took music or woodworking.

    I talked to an aviation mechanic of 42 years experience the other day... his shop doesn't want him to retire because there are very very few qualified applicants a

    • At 40 years old, I keenly remember the entire education apparatus all but saying blue collar work is less then white collar work. You MUST go to college or else you will be a failure.

      They didn't say it quite so direct but that's essentially what they were pushing. The idea of the trades was NEVER brought up. We also didn't have autoshop, woodworking or anything else that involved using your hands besides data input into a computer. I wouldn't call data entry using your hands beyond a technicality.

    • Well that's kicking the can not very far down the road.

      Maybe with enough incentive your friend won't retire... yet, but he's going to stop working there sooner or later, and I'm the grand scheme of things maybe not much later. Maybe they should hire some unqualified apprentices and train them to be qualified aircraft mechanics. Better start now while the knowledgeable guy is still there!

      • and you put your finger on another problem. He said they don't train (this is government .. um... shop, I'm not sure how that works... he works at the airport on government planes/property) But they only hire qualified people. So they push the training out to someone else...that is obviously a bureaucratic oversight.. and knowing bureaucracies, that won't get fixed until there's a crisis... and from the looks of it... there will be one. Ugh. Scary.
  • It's a broad subject. If you are teaching one class, what would it be?
  • CS uses critical thinking (some of the time... just look at some software).
    Critical thinking is involved in way way way more than CS, it is used in all sorts of different fields, medicine, philosophy ,agriculture, engineering, even the ability to read news and discern what is/isn't "fake news".
  • Instead of an elective for the .5% who will understand it, teach computer literacy to everyone. They can't tell a mouse from a cat and will all be useless in any kind of office job as a result. We don't need any more career burger flippers.

  • When I was in high school (private school, Australia, 90s) they had some good computer classes. They had a "typing/MS Office/etc" class as well as a programming class (that used Turbo Pascal and then later Visual Basic 4 or so) and some multimedia stuff as well (Photoshop and such).

    This was in the days when 64K ISDN was considered a decent internet connection.

    Although this same school had (among other things) a media studies class with actual TV cameras and a proper TV mixing desk (inherited from an actual

    • My high school (public school in Florida no less) in the late 80s had 8088/8086s and we learned Turbo Pascal on them, and we had green screen terminals hooked up to a mainframe at the local university for learning fortran and turbo pascal.

  • Let's just up the H1-B visas!

  • A bit late for that. Programming is well beyond Basic now and you really need the aptitude to be a programmer. Do we really need programmers that badly?
      Why not teach medicine and construction while you are at it. General "computer skills"? That is such a vague thing.

    • Programming is well beyond Basic now and you really need the aptitude to be a programmer.

      A fallacy. What you need is an aptitude for problem solving and analysis. Actual development of the solution is entirely secondary.

      Similar skill set to mathematics.

      That being said, the AI revolution is ensuring that actual development is not something we should be expending effort on. Rather, corporations are embracing cruddy code that sort of works most of the time in exchange for flushing most of the dev team.

      Personally, I always understood CS classes were there to get us to embrace, understand and not

  • Getting past the "AI will replace us all" and "no jobs now, why bother" things, this is providing resources for students that are interested to take a CS course. That's a good thing. Should they do it for shop classes and music classes? Absolutely, Dance, art? Indeed.

    No reason not to expose people to ideas and different ways of thinking and expressing themselves. Well, there is one reason, which is a total lack of funding which pits what is essential versus elective against each other.

  • Lots of discussion here about WHAT to actually teach the kids, and whether they need to know HOW computers work, rather than just a quick course in MS Office. From an employers point of view - though here in the UK - we take on a number of (what I call) kids for their first office-based job. Age range normally 20 to 22. What frustrates me most of all is that they have no idea of simple logic. We do use Excel a fair amount, and also things like InDesign - for which we design our own custom scripts. I often s

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