Chicago Public Schools Promoting Computer Science to Core Subject 236
dmiller1984 writes "The Chicago Public Schools, the third-largest public school system in the United States, announced a five-year plan today that would add at least one computer science course to every CPS high school, and elevate computer science to a core requirement instead of an elective. CPS announced this through a partnership with code.org, stating that the non-profit would provide free curriculum, professional development, and stipends for teachers."
How long before... (Score:1, Interesting)
...people see that this is Gates and Zuck and blindly assume this is some lock-in without actually looking at the content.
If it were some Microsoft or Facebook specific thing then yes it would be bad, but it isnt. So please read the curriculum before commenting.
Re:PC-free households (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Taught by whom? (Score:4, Interesting)
CPS pays an average of just under $75K to teachers, which is more than most private schools do. Along with the extra job security and (promised if not delivered) pensions, that makes the teaching positions attractive to quite a few people. The teachers I know also feel good about dedicating their professional lives to students in CPS, who are generally in need of every bit of help they can get.
If I had made a bundle in the dot com bubble or something, I could see myself teaching CS in CPS. Or at least trying -- I teach grad school and don't know if I have the personality for younger students.
Re:Teaching critical thinking early is a bad idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. Why would we ever want to 'teach' people to have critical thinking skills? Schooling is all about indoctrination and rote memorization, and actual thoughts would just get in the way of that.
I think you missed the part where I said that some critical thinking skills are formed on their own; and people should definitely have critical thinking skills; I've been persuaded by another poster that it should be a mandatory grade 12 (High School Senior) course, rather than waiting for the first year of college.
It's counter productive to impair the ability to teach children rote information by teaching them to doubt the source before attempting to teach them the rote information. For non-rote information classes, that's the likely places that self-derived critical thinking skills will develop on their own.
Also see my other post about certain religious sects - I give the example of Amish/Mennonite communities) where doubting your teacher in school becomes the same as doubting your parents and doubting your religious authority. Instilling a high probability of acting on such doubts, which is an opportunity given at 14-16 years of age in those communities, is effectively cultural genocide.
While you may be saying "Good! I'm a rational humanist, and they should be too! I want everyone to be like me!", those cultures embody skill sets that we, as a society, may decide we need some day, in the same way that some - myself included - have argued that kids should be taught to do math without calculators because one EMP, and they won't be able to add anything on their own past "ten fingers" any more.