Standardized Tests Blamed, Asian Students Ignored In Google-Gallup K-12 CS Study 184
theodp writes: According to a study released Thursday by Google and Gallup, standardized tests may be holding back the next generation of computer programmers. The Google-Gallup Searching for Computer Science: Access and Barriers in U.S. K-12 Education report (PDF) found that the main reason given by a "comprehensive but not representative" sample of 9,693 K-12 principals and 1,865 school district superintendents in the U.S. for their schools not offering computer science "is the limited time they have to devote to classes that are not tied to testing requirements." Which makes one wonder if Google now views Bill Gates as part of the problem and/or part of the solution of K-12 CS education. The Google-Gallup report also explores race/ethnicity differences to access and learning opportunities among White, Black and Hispanic students — but not Asian students — a curious omission considering that Google's own Diversity Disclosure shows that 35% of its U.S. tech workforce is Asian, making it by far the most overrepresented race/ethnicity group at Google when compared to the U.S. K-12 public school population. Which raises the question: Why would the Google-Gallup study ignore the access and learning opportunities of the race/ethnicity subgroup that has enjoyed the greatest success at Google? Not unsurprisingly, the Google-Gallup report winds up by concluding that what U.S. K-12 education really needs is more CS cowbell.
Apple, Google, and MS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Newsflash. (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. Like the BASIC programming language that I learned in senior high school is relevant in the job marketplace today. Whatever these students allegedly learn about "computer science" in K-12 will be obsolete before the ink on their "job-ready diploma" from Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, et. al. diploma is dry.
Teaching you BASIC taught you how to learn programming languages. High School is not there to teach you a trade, even College is not there to teach you a trade. A College diploma is a license to learn. But if they taught you one programming language it will be all the easier to pick up the next one.
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You've convinced me, but that was the easy part.
Now try that on every HR drone in the world.
Re: Newsflash. (Score:4, Interesting)
A college professor of mine once told the class that everything he taught us would be obsolete by the time we graduated. This didn't make the classes useless, though, because the core concepts he taught could be applied for the rest of our careers.
Nobody's saying that kids learning BASIC will go out and get jobs programming BASIC, but BASIC could lead to PASCAL which could lead to C which could lead to pretty much any other language and any of a hundred different jobs.
Because Asians are successful. (Score:5, Insightful)
It ruins the narrative if you include them.
The stereotyping of Asians (Score:3, Insightful)
Let us be fair here --- if stereotyping the blacks and/or the Hispanics has become a serious social offense, why is stereotyping the Asians still permissible?
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White people have had an advantage for hundreds of years (or longer?), and it shows in the percentage of politicians ruling [washingtonpost.com], and probably more importantly the percentage of super rich [huffingtonpost.com]. It started with slavery, but continued with Jim Crow, and exists today as, at minimum, bias. With that history and current imbalance, it stands
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How would the narrative, by which presumably you mean the suggestion that there should be more opportunities for Black and Hispanic children to study CS at K-12 level, be "ruined" by not looking at Asians? Regardless of how many Asian kids have access to it, that doesn't change the fact that Black and Hispanic children are disadvantaged. Please explain exactly what you mean.
Note that the goal is not to drag successful groups down, it's to bring the disadvantaged ones up. So there would be little point doing
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For comparison as a baseline, and probably because idiots keep complaining that whites are disadvantaged.
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No. It contradicts the liberal narrative that the man is keeping the brother down.
Recent immigrants that come here and thrive make all under performing lower class types that are already here look bad. It makes it easier to come to the conclusion that you can determine your own destiny and don't need to be a ward of the state.
I don't think K-12 CS is a good idea anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
US primary and secondary schools are good largely at smothering any love of learning or a subject that children have. Like to read? Here's a bunch of dull books you are required to read and give a report on. Like math? Here's a billion problems to work on, and don't dare sneak a peak ahead in the book to find the easy way (or write a program on your computer to solve them). Interested in history? Here it is in the driest form possible, please regurgitate on command.
Re:I don't think K-12 CS is a good idea anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
Like to read? Here's a bunch of dull books you are required to read and give a report on.
At least in California, it doesn't work that way. The kids are required to earn a certain number of reading "AR points" each week, but they can read pretty much any books they like. 95% of the books in the public library are in the system. My son likes to read science books. My daughter likes to read trashy novels with shirtless guys on the cover. The schools are fine with either.
Like math? Here's a billion problems to work on, and don't dare sneak a peak ahead in the book to find the easy way (or write a program on your computer to solve them).
No, it doesn't work like that at all, at least in California. Much of the math is taught on-line and self-paced. Solving problems with the computer is actually encouraged, and the programming classes are often integrated with the math curriculum.
Let me guess: You actually don't have kids, you have no idea what the public schools are teaching, or how they teach it, and everything you know about "Common Core", you learned from Donald Trump. Right?
Re:I don't think K-12 CS is a good idea anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
No, it doesn't work like that at all, at least in California. Much of the math is taught on-line and self-paced. Solving problems with the computer is actually encouraged, and the programming classes are often integrated with the math curriculum.
Let me guess: You actually don't have kids, you have no idea what the public schools are teaching, or how they teach it, and everything you know about "Common Core", you learned from Donald Trump. Right?
What you describe is so radically different than what we grew up with and than what I've heard described by non-California parents that it is difficult to believe it is the norm rather than you happening to live in a neighborhood with a very good school. It sounds like your public schools have basically gone Montessori.
Re:I don't think K-12 CS is a good idea anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I've had no experience with education in CA. I have bumped into a little in NM though. I was staying with a friend in NM and her son was having problems with math(s). I'm an engineer, I know a decent amount of maths, and I've even taught undergrad engineers mathematics at a well respected university. So I figured I'd offer.
And I did.
Holy Jesus H. Christ on a bike.
I can only conclude that there isn't a working mathemetician within about 6000 miles of the entire school system. It's this bizarre perverse mirror image of what maths actually is. It is beyond awful.
I mean sure they had their nice very fat full colour textbooks, complete with places to go online for more problems or some bizarro animations or something, lots of guff on "relevance" (as if), and nice little full colour and prettily drawn cheat sheets listing all the handy formula etc which could also be printed out in dead tree form.
On and there were lots of problems graded carefully in terms of difficulty and etc etc.
The trouble is, what was missing from the whole circus show was... the maths.
The poor kid was awfully, terribly confused. Because nothing made any sense. It was all presented as a collection of "facts" and "rules" that you then have to "apply" to problem after problem.
The whole concept of thinking or reasoning or working out is utterly absent (first principles? what's that?). The idea seemed to be to identify the fact to apply (by magic? guessing?) then apply it to reach the answer.
Proof? What's a proof? The entire concept of proving things was uttely absent from the whole thing. Oh and jesus, the utter obsession with notation pedantry is just depressing and distracts from the whole point.
I remember one particularly curious "problem" which was a hideously bastardised cersion of triangle centroids. Except instead of proving it (it's an interesting theorem), they had to verify it in coordinate geometry using the "length rule". Googling the "length rule" reveals a bunch of education pages, not Wikipedia or Mathworld. School maths is always a bad sign. Turns out it's just a complicatified version of Pythagoras Theorem.
Turns out further that they've only ever been presented with that theorem as a fact to memorise and "apply". He had *no* idea it wasn't a fundemental thing to remember and that one could prove it with a couple of pictures.
The entire course seemed to be like this. It was beyond awful. Sure some kids get it, perhaps because the underlying patterns in maths are so strong and so elegant that it's almost impossible to suppress them. Others are exceptionally good at mindless rote memorisation that they get by. For everyone else it's some kind of purgatory.
Now as for tech with self pacing and online lectures and whatnot is all pointless if the underlying material is fundementally broken. What's needed as far as I can tell in the cases I've seen is the whole thing to be burned to the ground and rebuilt from scratch. Programming classes integrated, or at least substantially nearby is a good idea if they're done in a remotely reasonable way. I self taught myself about 3D rotations and projection to do graphics for instance when I was a kid, and didn't even realise I was "learning maths".
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Rote memorization IS what schools are about today. You are not supposed to understand. You are not supposed to deduct it yourself. And sure as fuck you are not supposed to question it.
There is actually a very good reason for this: It's easier to teach. And most importantly, easier to test. It's also much easier for kids who can sponge (soak up the crap - pour out the crap at the test - no need to retain anything, just rinse and repeat for the next subject). Most of all, though, since you don't have to build
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Yeah, that's the big difference I'm noticing from when I went to school and when I'm tutoring my n
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Like to read? Here's a bunch of dull books you are required to read and give a report on.
At least in California, it doesn't work that way. The kids are required to earn a certain number of reading "AR points" each week, but they can read pretty much any books they like. 95% of the books in the public library are in the system. My son likes to read science books. My daughter likes to read trashy novels with shirtless guys on the cover. The schools are fine with either.
Like math? Here's a billion problems to work on, and don't dare sneak a peak ahead in the book to find the easy way (or write a program on your computer to solve them).
No, it doesn't work like that at all, at least in California. Much of the math is taught on-line and self-paced. Solving problems with the computer is actually encouraged, and the programming classes are often integrated with the math curriculum.
Let me guess: You actually don't have kids, you have no idea what the public schools are teaching, or how they teach it, and everything you know about "Common Core", you learned from Donald Trump. Right?
I'm in California and IMHO the way they are teaching math in elementary school sucks. Working on a computer is a distraction and it actually makes it harder to learn when solving the problem takes a few steps. My son can solve things like mixed fraction operations much faster on paper than trying to do it on a computer as his teach was trying to have the class do. Also the schools aren't spending enough time on subjects and giving enough problems to master a topic. They keep jumping around; I think they
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I'm in California and IMHO the way they are teaching math in elementary school sucks. Working on a computer is a distraction
This is the crux of the problem with education reform. No matter what you do, someone will complain. First, Russotto was complaining that kids can't work ahead. I pointed out that that is wrong, and in many public schools the kids can work ahead at their own pace. Then you complain that that is a bad thing, and the kids should go back to drills with pencil and paper.
For the record, I very much disagree with you. Recent changes in California public schools have been very much for the better. Why should
Good programs for teaching math (Score:3)
A good program will work for teaching math on the computer. There's a lot of bad educational software out there, but I remember learning algebra on a PCJr as a kid long before we ever got to it in school.
Re:I don't think K-12 CS is a good idea anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm in California and IMHO the way they are teaching math in elementary school sucks. Working on a computer is a distraction and it actually makes it harder to learn when solving the problem takes a few steps. My son can solve things like mixed fraction operations much faster on paper than trying to do it on a computer as his teach was trying to have the class do.
I don't know if this is universal, but I was blessed to be in the very last class to learn how to use slide rules in my school. Before that, I thought I just stunk at math. But after seeing the slide rule, and after a few operations with it, it was like a big bank of switches closed in my brain. I recall muttering when it hit.
After that, my math related grades went way up - even without using the slide rule. Something about the mechanical relationships on the rule, or something just made it click for me. Also the bit of mental gymnastics, since you needed to work with powers or notation.P Dunno if it would work for everyone, but sure changed my life. Seems so archaic, but just something about them.
I still keep and use a slide rule in the garage. Only problem is I can't figure out where the batteries are for it...
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We've had similar problems outside of California.
Math education is uniformly abominable in the US and always has been. It was that way when I was a kid. Teachers don't care. If they do the rest of the machine will override them and grind them down.
A ghetto kid could make a miraculous turnaround do to the effort of some European college do-gooder and be slapped back down by his own kind. The brothers don't really need the help of the man. They can keep each other down all on their own.
There is no real intere
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have things really changed that much in 12 years?
From what I have seen, yes. My daughter is 5 years older than my son, and things have changed drastically in the last 5 years. The modern AR Reading program is only two years old. Before that, it included only a tiny percentage of children's book in print. Today it is comprehensive. Self-paced math, and "flipped classrooms" for math, are also new.
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Re:I don't think K-12 CS is a good idea anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
My son likes to read science books. My daughter likes to read trashy novels with shirtless guys on the cover. The schools are fine with either.
In postmodern America, reading trashy novels with bare chested men on teh cover is the exact equivalent of readng science books.
Literary porn is still porn.
Re:I don't think K-12 CS is a good idea anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
Literary porn is still porn.
Sure, but it is also literature, while photographic porn is anatomy. If a girl can improve her reading comprehension and strengthen her vocabulary by reading trashy novels, that that is a good thing.
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Literary porn is still porn.
Sure, but it is also literature, while photographic porn is anatomy. If a girl can improve her reading comprehension and strengthen her vocabulary by reading trashy novels, that that is a good thing.
oooookay..... we be walking, yeah we be walking.
Re:I don't think K-12 CS is a good idea anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
Ooh looks like we have a literature snob.
Literature is another thing that's taught awfully badly in schools. I only started to understand criticism of it in my early-mid thirties, partly because of the abuse foisted on the topic by my schooling.
Studying nothing but classics is actually a terrible idea IMO. There are all sorts of rules of literature that can be broken by sufficiently skilled authors, for example. If you study nothing but the very best, it's almost impossible to figure out what the rules are, why they're there and in fact how the very skilled authors have broken them in an acceptable way. Oh and because they're classics they're suposed to be good and so you're not really meant to say much bad about them.
Terrible terrible idea. Now, some kids are smart enough and good enough with language that they figure it out. For everyone else it's about as bizarre and nonsensical as the maths teaching.
It's actually far, far more instructive to read and think about and critique less good books. By seeing the mistakes those authors make, and how they abuse rules of composition in ways that don't work is far, far more instructive.
Oh and while you're at it, why don't you list your hobbies too so the entire internet can pick out what you do in your leisure time as pointless.
Re:I don't think K-12 CS is a good idea anyway (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly. For a visual analogy, if you see a movie with good visual effects, you come out thinking that looked really good, without really understanding why it looked good. If you see a movie with bad visual effects, you come out and talk with all your friends about how this effect looked so fake because of A, and that effect was bad because of B. Once you understand a bunch of stuff which doesn't work, what's left over is mostly stuff which does work.
One of the greatest benefits of digital photography has been the instantaneous feedback. You see something interesting and take a picture. The picture doesn't look like you imagined it would, so you tweak some settings on your camera and take another picture. You repeat this process noting which changes seemed to improve the picture the most. And eventually (hopefully) you arrive at the picture as you imagined it would look. You have to crawl through all that stuff which doesn't work in order to learn what does work. Being presented only with the final successful picture does very little to teach you how the photographer arrived at that picture.
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Odd, that California isn't how you describe it at all.
So you have kids in California public schools? What city? What grade? Are you saying that your kids don't participate in the AR reading program, and don't use computers for math?
I am therefore presuming you mean some form of non-traditional school, that or its no where the major metro areas, or the powers that be have not noticed.
This is a standard public school in San Jose, the third biggest city in the state.
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No sir/madam. The purpose of school system is to produce lots of people who would do boring, uninspiring, mindless things day in day out. Creative free thinking people cause trouble, question set ways of doing things and generally make things rough by rocking t
I think K-12 CS is a good idea (Score:2)
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so what's a better way?
Give 'em a shovel and have them dig a ditch or do some other kind of shit labor. I did enough of it when I was young that I wanted to spend as much time learning as possible so that I wouldn't have to do that kind of work ever again.
I think the school system needs a shakeup and I'd like to see a system that abolishes the idea of grade-level entirely. Treat it like college where every subject area has its own progression and allow the kids to find what they enjoy and excel at instead of being stuck with t
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Given your apparent lack of reading comprehension, I will conclude that you are not intelligent enough to contribute meaningfully to the conversation.
The GP never advocated hard labor. Setting up a straw man is horrible debating style, and what's worse, I don't believe for a moment that you think it's a straw man. You are that stupid.
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What I'm saying is that if a kid sits around playing Xbox all day, school will seem less appealing in comparison than if you have to go pick rock out of a field or actually do some work. Doing well in school and going to math competitions or other stuff like that meant that I got to miss doing those chores and thankfully my parents were quite encouraging
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so what's a better way?
wander around and learn as you want? most kids will do nothing. autodidactics are rare
It actually can work pretty well, especially if you give the kids an equal say in running things. They'll fart around for a bit and then get interested in something and then discover a need to know the uninteresting stuff. The would be carpenter suddenly discovers that he needs math and flies through it kind of thing. Note that you will not produce people who will put up with the abuse that many white collar jobs come with. Summerhill is one of the most famous and it is worth reading one of the books about
Asian the most represented? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's still 60% white. White doesn't count anymore?
Honestly, I don't understand what people want with these stats. Decrease the number of Asians and Europeans working at these places?
Re:Asian the most represented? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Because in the name of "equality", your gender and skin color matter more than your technical ability
In other words, the Asians, even those who came from India, are born with skin colors of the Caucasians?
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What a bizarre conclusion. Here is Google trying to improve education for disadvantaged minorities, in order to get their technical ability up to scratch. And there you are complaining that technical ability isn't the primary concern.
The idea is to create more good candidates. There are only so many kids, so the only way to increase the pool of candidates is a forced breeding programme or trying to improve access for the disadvantaged ones (making the most of the available resource).
Nothing in what they are
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Across the board, academic success is linked to the parents. Even in "poor" households, the parents are the driving force. You simply cannot fully outsource education. The parents have to care, or the kids likely will not.
All of the whining about social justice won't change prevailing cultural values within the populations you are trying to "liberate". Special programs and throwing money the problem won't either.
Re:Asian the most represented? (Score:5, Informative)
It didn't say "most represented". It said "most overrepresented".
If whites are 70% of the population and Asians 15%, but among computer programmers whites make up 60% and Asians are 30%, then Asians are overrepresented in that field. Comprende?
Re: Asian the most represented? (Score:2)
Got it. So after we have "racial equality" in the tech field, we'll go after the other fields too right? Like medicine, law, petroleum, construction, fishing, etc?
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Who's we? The SJW (social justice warriors) behind these stories are a miniscule percentage of the population. Mainstream media loves them but nobody else really cares much.
Slashdot is heavily left-leaning but even here you will see very little support for affirmative action in hiring more black and hispanic programmers. Most liberals still have some sanity, the SJWs are a tiny fringe element.
Don't you open that can of worm (Score:3, Insightful)
Back in 1992 the "White Men Can't Jump" movie ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01... [imdb.com] ) was made and all was cool
Will it be as cool to make "Black Men Can't Code" and/or "Women Can't Program" movies in today;s climate?
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Damn right. I'm a short white guy, the NBA discriminates against me! They claimed they don't want me 'cause I allegedly can't play, but I just know it's racial prejudice! Scandal! Where is the press when you need them?
Re:Asian the most represented? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't get to claim discrimination when you're winning.
You're not winning when you represent 77.7% of the population, but only 60% representation at Google. Not that I am complaining. I say screw quotas and hire the best person for the job.
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According to the linked graph [staticflickr.com], white people are overrepresented by about 16%. That certainly dispels the myth that white people are being discriminated against.
I wonder if the high number of Asians at Google could be due to Indians and Pakistanis, i.e. people educated in other countries rather than in the US school system.
The Indians place a high value on Education (Score:2)
Of the different ethnicity from Asia the Indians place a very high value on Education - on par with the Japanese, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, and the Chinese
The Pinoys (from the Philippines) and those from Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, and the Pacific Islanders (like Micronesia / Melanesia) education to them is not that important
As for the Pakistanis, the Bangladeshis, the Afghans, the Indonesians and the Malays, their utmost priority is Islam, their religion
The Iranians are the odd lot - although they are of t
Re:The Indians place a high value on Education (Score:4, Informative)
> As for the Pakistanis, the Bangladeshis, the Afghans, the Indonesians and the Malays, their utmost priority is Islam, their religion
That's odd. I've known a number of Desis and Pakastanis in IT.
I even known a couple of genuine hadjis. It didn't seem to interfere with the job.
Apparently in Pakistan engineers and doctors have high prestige and IT gets lumped in with engineers.
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What about the NBA.
The NBA is concerned about their representation as such, this is why they are working with expanding their profile as well as ensuring that communities perceive options besides sports and rap to get ahead. Beyond that they've funded the WNBA as well.
The NBA is working on their diversity problem by hiring whites and females for off-court and back office duties. However, the "talent" will continue to be black. This would basically be like Silicon Valley "fixing" it's diversity issues by hiring a bunch of African Americans for janitorial and lawn care services.
I'm just telling it like it is, not complaining, and I am no SJW. Hire the best person for the job. If African Americans are better than whites on the court, then hire them.
What is that? (Score:3)
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He's a blithering imbecile. You can be sure that he's either exaggerating, has totally misunderstood the issue, or is just plain making shit up.
Have Dice found a buyer yet? Hopefully he'll be be in the dumpster along with schwit1 (who might actually be the same person - they're both equally crap in similar ways).
Is Google hiring programmers w only a HS diploma? (Score:2)
Last I checked you had better have at least a BS from one of the top universities to get an interview and you're not getting into one of those unless you have good grades across the board and high test scores in one of the standardized entrance exams. Furthermore, they are only looking for self-starters, the kind of geeks that are self-taught would find any high school CS course extremely boring.
Re:Is Google hiring programmers w only a HS diplom (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think about it Google could save a bunch of money giving their own standardized test to HS students the give them a few years of their own training in exchange for staying on for a certain number of years. The students will have no debt and you can pay them much less as a result.
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Maybe Google could even buy children from families and keep them in some kind of cells while training and feeding them? That would probably save them even more money if the kids don't even know there is a world outside of Google.
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My company paid me to go to college and grad school. The agreement was I had to work for them for 3 years after graduation or I had to pay them for the tuition. It is a great deal.
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Last I checked you had better have at least a BS from one of the top universities to get an interview and you're not getting into one of those unless you have good grades across the board and high test scores in one of the standardized entrance exams. Furthermore, they are only looking for self-starters, the kind of geeks that are self-taught would find any high school CS course extremely boring.
I am a self starter and I didn't find my High School CS class boring. I ate up the classroom assignments like candy. I loved solving any problem with a computer, no matter how simple. After I got done with the project I was supposed to complete 6 or 8 weeks later, I would come up with my own challenges and code them.
My poor CS instructor managed to do a great job with our class, most of which were people who were never going to get it, no matter how much they were babied along, and then there were a few o
Is K-12 CS really necessary? (Score:2)
How useful is K-12 Computer Science in terms of getting kids to go into the major? It's a huge unstated assumption that it is important to have people do CS in high school.
There are some courses where you really need a high school background to take a college course--math and music theory are the only two that really come to mind as "we assume you already know how to do some stuff and don't offer an intro class for people with no training in this subject."
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You may be surprised to find that CS is pretty much alone in majors and minors at university that carry absolutely no pre-requisite or recommended program of study involving CS. Music, Arts, Natural Sciences, Languages, Engineering, they all require evidence of prior learning associated with the discipline. Not so CS. CS and Engineering schools care less if you have done CS, they want Calculus and Physics, not AP or IB CS and it is rare that they consider Junior College work with too much seriousness either
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I just checked out the University of Maryland College Park (my alma mater) Computer Science program. They have no prerequisites in Calculus or Physics. In fact, they have no prerequisites (beyond general university entrance requirements) at all: "If you list Computer Science as your preferred major and are admitted to the university, you will start directly in our program."
There are 4 CS classes you can test out of (but without credits) if you do have previous experience; you can also test out of Calculus
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There are a lot of schools out there. Not all of them are going to be a total meat grinder. They vary from engineering to business with stops in between.
what is with this regular propaganda on slashdot? (Score:2)
is this the same submitter who is always whining about computer science education?
kids need to learn computer programming. it's a basic part of the world we live in now
if you don't agree with that or you don't understand, you are dooming the usa to pathetic second rate status. all serious countries in the world are ramping up computer science education. this is the fucking future and is a pretty obvious step for anyone remotely aware
it's like it's 1800s and people are trying to get more engineering educatio
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It might be because people with CS degrees have entered the workforce and have realized that for people with CS majors, the tech industry is becoming the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory of the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Just because some tech field offers jobs today doesn't mean that it's going to offer careers ten years from now. The question is, do you want this as a career? Do you want to spend your ti
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supply and demand friend
that's all that exists as a valid force on this topic
if you resist education here (because keeping people dumb has always been a winning approach) they simply import workers form elsewhere or outsource the entire division
computer science is mind work. you can't control that, and to try to makes you a malicious fool in the company of some pretty vile assholes today and throughout history
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Supply and demand, but when? And where?
If you were training in 1998 to be a specialist in adapting computer systems to Y2K, you might have seen big demand. For a little while. But demand for a little while does not a career make.
So was designing trebuchets in the months leading up to the development of modern artillery. After that, it was mind work that nobody needed.
Things are moving quickly. Learning to assemble cars might have looked like a grea
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an education in anything can lead to a career that evaporates. ok
and?
what the fuck is your fucking point? why does that make any fucking difference on this topic?
i've seriously run into some weird clot of wackjobs here
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No. If you can write well, you'll always be able to get a job. Also HVAC. People will always want to live places that are too cold or too warm and will need heating and cooling.
I'm sure there are others.
I know it's late, but our little point on the discussion started in regard to why some people on Slashdot slag CS education, and I posited that maybe t
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an education in {X} has an over supply and doesn't guarantee the easy life
{X} = any career in the entire world
you have no point
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If supply and demand played any role in salaries, STEM salaries would skyrocket concerning how dire the situation allegedly is with so many engineers missing in the workforce.
Considering how everyone and their dog is going for a MBA degree today, management salaries should plummet.
Oddly, the opposite is the case.
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no, there are plenty of mediocre MBAs who can't cut it. same with lawyers. same with any profession
there is, and always will be, people who get CS degrees and can't cut it, and people without any degree who succeed in the field regardless. supply and demand has to do with proficiency, nothing else, and a degree only correlates weakly with that point. this will always be true
so you let anyone who wants to pursue subject, pursue the subject. if the subject matter is important to your society, you encourage ki
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When programming and engineering jobs are gone, what else is going to be left? Who's going to hire someone to do welding when they've got a perfectly capable robot that can do it? There will likely come a day when the robots can think for and program themselves and programming is no longer a useful occupation, but it will survive
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No doubt. But the question is whether it will survive as a decent middle-class career. Maybe "surviving" means those jobs all get sent to third world countries.
I'd keep my passport updated if I were you.
Re:what is with this regular propaganda on slashdo (Score:5, Interesting)
kids need to learn computer programming. it's a basic part of the world we live in now
Computers are a basic part of the world we live in, computer programming isn't, in the same way that people need to know how to drive a car but they don't need to know how to engineer one.
all serious countries in the world are ramping up computer science education.
Not really, no.
it's like it's 1800s and people are trying to get more engineering education... but some luddite crackpot assholes are screaming against that trend
People weren't trying to get more engineering education in the 1800s, the upper classes were receiving a classical education and the rest were learning trades, if they were fortunate.
why?
for what retarded agenda is this propaganda drumbeat against CS education on slashdot anyway?
i can't even understand the upside for resisting computer programming and computer science education
computers are evil? we're going to preserve jobs for old fat mediocre programmers by keeping kids dumb? some sort of conspiratard freak out?
is it just "companies are evil, and companies want more CS education, therefore, resist CS education... hurrr durrr"
what is the agenda exactly with this moronic propaganda on slashdot?
and slashdot, can you please just squelch this retarded puerile crap in the future please? it does not serve your audience, your site is being taken over by some wackjob fringe
is it just one useless douchebag troll with enough commitment to flood the submission queue with his mental diarrhea?
Programmers are expensive. They're expensive because programming is difficult and not many people take to it. Therefore the objection most have to corporate entities blatantly and openly trying to influence the national education system to ease the supply side of the equation could well be characterised as "stop wasting our kids time for greedy corporate pigs".
Simples, no?
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supply and demand
that's all that exists as a valid force on this topic
if you resist education here (because keeping people dumb has always been a winning approach) they simply import workers form elsewhere or outsource the entire division
computer science is mind work. you can't control that, and to try to makes you a malicious fool in the company of some pretty vile assholes today and throughout history
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Your vacuous comment addresses exactly nothing I've said. When you're done frothing at the mouth maybe try reading it again.
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it address what you said directly. reading comprehension/ basic cognition is failing you wackjob
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No, it doesn't. How's that manananggal movie coming along kuya, as we're on the subject of whackjobs?
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thank you, that's what he is indeed
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And they won't do that anyway because it's cheaper?
Or the missing missing option, bring H1-Bs in.
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"they simply import workers form elsewhere" = H1-B you moron
what is your point? to agree with me by arguing with me?
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>Computers are a basic part of the world we live in, computer programming isn't
This is like saying that toilets are a basic part of the world we live in, but plumbers are not.
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Right, so why aren't we mandating that plumbing be taught in schools?
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Programming may not be a necessary skill but I think it is great at teaching you logical thinking. A bit like maths. Proportionality is perhaps the highest level of maths that most people actually need. Yet kids still learn things like equations and trigonometry.
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all serious countries in the world are ramping up computer science education.
Not really, no.
The UK is. Japan is. France has started offering basic programming from elementary level. Developing nations like India and China are pushing CS really hard.
So yeah, most serious countries seem to recognize that CS is really worth teaching. It happens to be one of the most accessible forms of engineering - unlike electronics and mechanical engineering it can be done at a normal school desk with equipment that schools already have.
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It still helps to understand how the car functions, even if you don't intend to fix it yourself. Otherwise, it's easy to destroy your rather expensive asset or cause it to be a threat to self and others.
The same goes for computers.
On the other hand, the powers that be don't want informed consumers either.
More CS cowbell? (Score:2)
Now it appears that the Slashdot editors are joining in with the cow trolling.
When I say "cow", you say, "moo".
SNL (Score:2)
I could have used more Cowbell [youtube.com]
Testing and college prep get in the way (Score:3)
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Leadership and Activities (Score:2)
In 12 years, it is not hard to prepare enough to do well on the SAT/ACT. They don't even cover calculus. Get that out of the way in a few hours, then spend the rest of the time on more interesting things.
Getting into a good college isn't about testing--good testing is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. You need to show that you are going to contribute to the community. You need to have lots of extracurriculars and serious leadership in some of them--and ideally in some volunteer group not connected to the school. Serious leadership and success in one is more impressive than having fifty groups with no leadership or success, but the basic idea is if the kid is curious and really applies himself
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Yes, absolutely. I remember watching two brothers with serious schooling and psych problems figure out how to sail a small boat on their own. It was amazingly good for them and the kind of learning and experience that you would *never* get in a structured setting.
It should be the kid's choice what he does with his time, but the parent should be making some strong suggestions, basically get the kid in the habit of going to almost every group activity once and see what they like...
Of course Asian students were ignored. (Score:5, Insightful)
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And note the clever way in which the union-hated standardized-testing issue was dragged into the conversation as a bugaboo. "Of course we're racist and lazy ... we might do better if it wasn't for those infernal tests"..
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"Have you seen what they're doing with them these days? It's horseshit."
Dunno, talking about common core stuff? Even then, the problem would be a *particular* standardized test rather than standardized testing per se.
"A public school education is literally worse than nothing"
Homeschooling is growing in popularity, and not just amongst the religiously inclined.
Asians weren't ignored... (Score:3)
they're just considered "white" now. Like how hispanics and jews are "white" whenever it's convenient.
crazy question (Score:2)
Why in the hell would we let a for-profit corporation have any say in curriculum?
Just wondering. I mean, if they want to spend their $ to sponsor initiatives, go nuts. If they want to be racist (blacks only need apply) and sexist (women only need apply), it's their money, go to it.
But if the Ford Motor Co said "let's get more people in classes that have to do with working assembly line jobs" even Congress would have to recognize that for its transparent motivation, no?
No Child Left in Asia (Score:2)
Outside of a few high tech corridors, the number of Asian students in US primary schools if pretty small. I also suspect that a large percentage of Google's Asian employees grew up in Asia.
the main reason given by a "comprehensive but not representative" sample of 9,693 K-12 principals and 1,865 school district superintendents in the U.S. for their schools not offering computer science "is the limited time they have to devote to classes that are not tied to testing requirements."
So what the survey found is that school administrators are blaming No Child Left Behind, because instead of giving the students a good education and letting the test scores reflect that, they're trying to game the system by teaching to the test. It would be nice if someone could come up with a better way to measure a stu