Schools Get an F: Our Kids and Tech
While I am loathe to admit it, I danced on a lighted dance floor. I did The Hustle. I was quite underage to be going to clubs, but that's what we did. Those were the times I grew up in.*Why the confession?
Because while I was a girl--disco dancing under a mirrored ball--I got a better computer education than high-schoolers get today.
At my working-class public high school, I took a "computer" class. We had to learn a language and write a program. We called the computer on the special phone, put the telephone receiver in suction cups and typed the commands to run the program. If the program didn't work, we had to figure out why. Line by line. And when it worked, we had accomplished something and did a happy dance.
I used the C:\ prompt on my first computer (at work). Not because I am geeky, but because that was all there was. We had to imagine what was behind the dir command, because directories were opened one at a time. There was no tree, like in Windows, so you had to abstract and remember the directory structure.
The very, very basic programming and directory commands that I learned introduced me to using computers. I've been lucky enough to work with nice, smart, truly geeky people to help develop my technical knowledge. But I had something to build on, a basic computer literacy.
My kids go to pretty good schools. Their computer classes include how to use Excel and Powerpoint. Kids don't need to learn how to use productivity software. They just use it. "Programming," when offered, is usually HTML markup. They don't use logic. No IF...THEN...ELSE statements. The teachers don't use computers and are reluctant (don't know how?) to use them in class. The teachers who teach technology are hockey coaches. Kids get lessons in net-etiquette but not in three tier architecture.
We think that "born digital" kids know technology, but many of them can only put together a tacky, over-animated, under-researched slideshow. We have web "programmers" with a knowledge of HTML which they have parlayed into a visual programming language, but without any understanding of databases and data structures, systems analysis, or resource management. And, we have leaders who run programs based on technology, but who disengage whenever tech is mentioned.
Kids use technology and computers from sunup to sundown, but they don't know how it works. And they need to. Whether or not they are computer scientists or technologists, everyone needs a basic technical literacy. We teach the basics of reading, the building blocks of math, the structure of writing, but no fundamentals of technology. This is a huge mistake.
Government depends on the effective deployment of technology to solve problems. We need to recruit people who can write effective RFPs, navigate technology issues, oversee technology and technologists, as well as be geeks. But, that means we need people with the right knowledge and skills in the pipeline.
Kids do need to learn that The Cloud consists of physical servers, that data quality is critical to good output, that the semantic web can help machines make sense out of information on a web page so information structure counts, that information stored across multiple datasets and servers can be comb..., and all this is at least as important as whether a train leaving Boston for New York will beat an earlier, slower train from Providence.
Teachers, principals, schools, Secretary Duncan, let's get back to the future and do some meaningful updating of our technology curricula.
Technology is the fourth "R"--reading, (w)riting, 'rithmetic, and rechnology (that last one only works when spoken like Scooby-Doo another relic of my past).
[* here's how I was saved. Not quite fodder for On dot-gov.]
++++++++ Originally published on Gwynne On Dot-gov ++++++++
Views: 9
Tags: 2.0, cloud, cloud computing, computing., education, government, miscellaneous, project management, tech, technology
Comment
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Comment by Kevin Lanahan on December 2, 2010 at 9:32am -
One of my son's friends asked me for help in his high school web design class. The assignment was to create a mini site using tables and background colors. No CSS. When I said there was a better way to do it, I was told that he had to do it that way because that was in the book. Way to get our future web designers started off on the wrong foot!
I know you got to start somewhere, but this would be like teaching kids to program on punchcards. Or teaching a baby to speak by teaching her the alphabet first.
Not to dump on school administrators, but I know too many instances where a history teacher becomes a math teacher, not because of any affinity for the subject, but because they were handed a textbook and told that they were teaching math next year. If the teachers don't have any knowledge or real interest in the subject, they cannot create any enthusiasm in their students.
So do you get programmers to become teachers, or teach teachers how to program?
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Comment by Amanda Rhea on December 1, 2010 at 10:55am -
My kids are 6 right now and in the first grade. I guess I'm going to have to teach them all about 1s and 0s myself in a couple of years. I would say most of the people I work with don't understand how the computers they type on every day function. They just open excel or word and start typing.
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Comment by Eric Egger on December 1, 2010 at 10:40am -
Agree! My wife is an educator, and the school administration's view on technology investments is what whiz-bang toy can we pay for that will temporarily hold the kids' attention until they get distracted by their iphones/ipods, etc?
In that sense, technology becomes a distraction and doesn't further education's mission very much.
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Comment by Gwynne Kostin on November 30, 2010 at 9:37pm -
Thanks for the comments and experiences. I'm not getting nostalgic (hence the disco reference), it's not like I lived in "the good ole' days." But I am shocked that there is such a disconnect between inputs (programming, infrastructure, tech) and outputs (I wanna build Facebook, I know how to use it!).
@mrgovloop your school offered real programming? Such a dearth around here...
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Comment by GovLoop on November 30, 2010 at 12:16am -
Took Visual Basic in 9th grade...C++ and Pascal in high school. Good logic building
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Comment by Ken Maxwell on November 29, 2010 at 5:22pm -
Totally agree: When I started coding, I had to write programs that worked in 4-6Kb of space. My programs had to run efficiently, there was no choice! Now it doesn't matter....programs that I would have received a failing grade on, are now released to the general public - and patches (read: bugfixes) are released later.
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Comment by Martha Garvey on November 29, 2010 at 1:49pm -
Gwynne: right on. I tell people I used to work on the Internet when it was run by hamsters, but the fact is, I did need to use some basic programming language to delve into my file structure, and hard drives were just a distant dream, and data bases were something we built over time, and I had to explain to one of my bosses that we didn't have to copy everything we entered onto 3 x 5 cards...
Ah, memories. Learning to think in any discipline takes time, including computers. Especially computers.
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Comment by Brian Hughes on November 29, 2010 at 11:11am -
I couldn't agree more. I have a young relative who wanted to go into "video game" development until I showed him how much programming goes into those types of games. He thought all he would do is draw characters and backgrounds and play them all day long. I told him if he could get me a "Hello World", then I'd give him some books (Paper! imagine that!)
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