Training for Unemployment

It’s pretty clear where the jobs aren’t. Undergraduate degrees in “marketing,” “communications,” “journalism,” and “business” seem focused on earning money, but they are way too abstract and fundamental to compete with people with graduate degrees in the same fields who are also begging for jobs. There are six times more people looking for work that there are openings. But our high schools are the breeding grounds for future hopes, inspirations and passage into a highly competitive labor market. We’re not just vying for work against fellow Americans; the global marketplace can attach an expert to a task in an out-sourced minute.

I’ve blogged about teachers who ignore the computers in their classrooms and resort to the traditional teaching materials at the expense of the tools of modernity that their students must master to have a meaningful future. And now comes another anomaly: just as the computer revolution is exploding in every possible field of endeavor, just as the one solid job growth path rising above the rest is computer science, our high schools, faced with their own budget crises, are downsizing their computer science classes.

Just about everyone knows how to surf the Web, send emails, play in their social networks, shop and maybe use a couple of easy programs like Office’s Word or PowerPoint, but how many know how to create computer programs, write codes, set up Websites and navigate in the world of customized programming? High schools got to the front of this field pretty quickly with advanced comp/sci courses that taught how to write in Java or C++ or how to migrate into the world of HTML code and complex expressions of computer logic. It’s the stuff that enables everything from design robotics to video games to writing the next source code for a super-cool new social network.

But instead of growing these classes, our high schools are cutting back: “Nationally, the portion of schools that offer an introductory computer science course has dropped from 78 percent in 2005 to 65 percent this year, and the corresponding decline in AP courses went from 40 to 27 percent, according to a survey by the Computer Science Teachers Association… In the spring, the College Board, citing declining enrollment, canceled its AP computer science AB class, the more rigorous of its two courses in the subject… The result of sporadic or skimpy computer science training is that a generation of teenagers great at using computers will be unlikely to play a role in the way computer technology shapes lives in the future, said Chris Stephenson, executive director of the New York-based Computer Science Teachers Association.” Washington Post, December 21^st.

That the academic standards foisted on our schools by the clearly failed No Child Left Behind Act don’t recognize the values inherent in computer science has lowered the priority of teaching this subject. Seems pretty stupid, doesn’t it? Being labeled a computer nerd in high school doesn’t help recruit the best and the brightest to this most necessary field, where current jobs still go begging even in this brutal economy. So what’s a nation to do? “Educators and technologists say two things need to change: the image of computing work, and computer science education in high schools. Teacher groups, professional organizations like the Association for Computing Machinery and the National Science Foundation are pushing for these changes, but so are major technology companies including Google, Microsoft and Intel…

“Today, introductory courses in computer science are too often focused merely on teaching students to use software like word processing and spreadsheet programs, said Janice C. Cuny, a program director at the National Science Foundation. The Advanced Placement curriculum, she added, concentrates narrowly on programming. ‘We’re not showing and teaching kids the magic of computing,’ Ms. Cuny said…The agency is working to change this by developing a new introductory high school course and seeking to overhaul Advanced Placement courses as well. It hopes to train 10,000 high school teachers in the modernized courses by 2015.” New York Times, December 20^th.

By linking computer science to the magic of special effects or 3D animation or the engine that drives video games or even a cool new app for a cell phone, kids are learning the cool side of computing and code-writing. Perhaps, if our policy-makers can wake up before our children’s educations destroy their competitive edge in the global marketplace, there is hope for an American educational system badly in need of new directions, new ideas and vastly better and more “modern” teachers.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.