back to article These Chicago teens can't graduate until they learn some compsci

The Chicago Public Schools district has become the first in the nation to make computer science training a requirement for high school graduation. The district, the third-largest in the US, says that starting with next year's freshman class (graduating in 2020), all students will be required to complete one credit in a …

  1. tfewster
    FAIL

    Sweet localhost Chicago?

    I think you meant "Sweet ~ Chicago?"

    1. jake Silver badge

      @ tfewster (was: Re: Sweet localhost Chicago?)

      Some three days later and nobody has explained it.

      Think "Sweet Home Chicago" ... You and your 12 up-voters should ask your grandparents where modern music came from.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Boffin

        Re: @jake (was: Sweet localhost Chicago?)

        127.0.0.1 is not 'Home'

        It means 'localhost'

        Now you know this you might reconsider your post...

        Hi-de-hey...

        1. jake Silver badge

          @ Joefish (was: Re: @jake (was: Sweet localhost Chicago?))

          "127.0.0.1 is not 'Home'"

          Really? I'm fairly certain that when I telnet into 127.0.0.1 and successfully login, I will be home.

  2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    Commendable

    Now, do they have people to teach.

    Granted, my experience is from this side of the pond, but the level of computer science literacy in 90% of the math teachers who are also coerced into teaching CS starts and finishes with print "Hello World". They use Scratch as a "shield" long past the point where it can and should be used resulting in bored and annoyed teenagers in the classroom which in turn makes them hate CS for the rest of their lives. Probably that is what the powers that be want anyway - though shall not interfere with the outsourcing vested interests.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Commendable

      Well said Sir!

      I went into a secondary school a year or so back and talked to a group of year 10's (5th year) about what I do for a living.

      Thankfully, I had spent some time in a classroom beforehand where I got to speak to a few 1-to-1.

      I ended up speaking not about what I do directly but 'Problem Solving'. The teachers looked embarrassed when I delivered my talk.

      One came up to me afterwards and said, 'I suppose you really mean more homework?'

      That is not the answer.

      I told her that working in teams to solve problems is absolutely essential to pretty well any career (outside of working a Till at your local Tesco's [other stores are available]).

      Ah, (their eyes brightened up) That's one for general and liberal studies.

      I left shaking my head. There really is no hope. That teacher was not an old fogey like me but in her early 30's.

      1. DropBear
        Devil

        Re: Commendable

        "I told her that working in teams to solve problems is absolutely essential to pretty well any career"

        Absolutely - knowing when to say "yes sir" or "no sir" and especially when to keep one's mouth shut is the difference between carrier or no carrier. It has jack all to do with one's professional proficiency, but it certainly determines one's prospects of climbing the carrier ladder.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: the difference between carrier or no carrier

          For me the difference happened when someone picked up the phone and messed with my modem's connection :-)

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Comrade

          When I was at school, we were given an exercise to be done individually, then as a team. The lesson was supposed to be that teams performed better.

          However I completely annihilated not just my team, but all the teams. In the debrief I said that although "not asserting myself enough" may have been a factor in this contrived example, some skills simple suit no or only very flat management, and that sometimes dumbasses simply drag everyone down.

          1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

            Re: Comrade

            When I was at school, we were given an exercise to be done individually

            As expected. In the short term, teamwork is always less effective than a lone jedi doing a Death Star run.

            A lone jedi does not win you the war though. A fleet and an army does.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Teachers can learn too...

      I don't get the argument that teachers need to know Compsci to teach what will be an extremely basic class. They can read the textbook and blag it. After they teach the same course three years running, they'll have picked up enough...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Teachers can learn too...

        "read the textbook and blag it..."

        You're a consultant, aren't you.

  3. Christian Berger

    It's a shame we don't see programming as a basic skill

    We now live in a world where we have nearly as many computers as we have pens. We see writing as a basic skill with literacy rates usually way above 90%.

    To make the analogy from books to computers: We live in a world full of books, yet reading or writing is left to a few chosen ones. We see books as magical items which many people think they will never be able to see. At the same time, the literary class is actually widening the gap by making systems harder and harder to understand by making them more complex. UEFI, HTTP/2 and Systemd are just some examples for that.

    We need widespread computer literacy!

    1. maffski

      Re: It's a shame we don't see programming as a basic skill

      To make the analogy from books to computers: We live in a world full of books, yet reading or writing is left to a few chosen ones.

      To make a more accurate analogy. We live in a world full of books, yet writing is left to a few chosen ones while reading is practised by many.

      Oh wait, that's not really an analogy is it.

      To put it another way, programming is 'blue collar' skilled trade - no different to plumbing.

      1. kmac499

        Re: It's a shame we don't see programming as a basic skill

        "To put it another way, programming is 'blue collar' skilled trade - no different to plumbing"

        I'm inclined to agree with you but that by no way diminishes tradesmen.

        A basic knowledge of 'plumbing' is useful in order to understand how systems should be safely operated and maintained. similarly for CS classes.

        Having watched a skilled plumber look into an empty airing cupboard and then, a day later there was a tank with many pipes around it; all neatly installed so as not to interfere with each other and space left for maintenance access to pumps filters etc.. No sign of a drawing sketch or pencilled marks on the walls.

        Artisan skills are massively underrated in this country, we wrongly beleive thatsuch work is purely manual, not true. My plumber had to combine knowledge of installation regulations, (on which he was regularly assesed.), experience of materials and a hell of a lot of planning.

        1. Intractable Potsherd

          Re: It's a shame we don't see programming as a basic skill @kmac449

          I agree with you re: practical work. My wife and I are due to have twins in a few months. Being older and (possibly) wiser than previously, I am trying to work out how to make sure that the children will have the best set of opportunities in the future, and prepare them for a job-market where education may be less than valuable than practical skills. At the moment, home-schooling seems to be the way to go - state education does not address the right things, and, when it tries, it doesn't have the right people to do it. Those skills neither my wife or I have, we could buy in, but the key thing will be to deal with the underpinnings of learning - for instance, when I was at school, for many years I thought grammar was something that only applied to foreign languages, because we weren't taught English as a language!

          You are correct about the snobby attitude towards practical skills - when I was at school, my teachers were dismayed when I took woodwork as one of my options (they didn't do metalwork or car-mechanics, which would have suited me better), because it didn't fit with the academic route they had planned for me, yet my practical skills have enabled me to make a bit of money at various times.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: It's a shame we don't see programming as a basic skill

      I have serious reservations about making things compulsory. Maybe it's a hangover from compulsory games and Latin at school. Having said that I have to admit that my experience of programming was a much resented compulsory course in FORTRAN. Mind you it was only 5 days of which I managed to miss the first by being out of the country doing field work - whatever they did that day it can't have been much as I wasn't disadvantaged.

      I don't think it takes much exposure to a subject to discover that it is or isn't something you'll be good at. The field work for which I missed that first day of the FORTRAN course had been in a subject that grabbed my attention on a single day on a field course whilst at school; a day when the weather precluded the scheduled activity and its replacement was largely a matter of luck.

      In fact, longer suffering of a subject being badly taught may well be counter-productive and, as others have said here, where do you find the (good) teachers?

      Maybe the best approach would be to start with short taster courses concentrating on structured problem solving as much as coding. Provide short teacher training courses for this. If necessary some of the best teachers could work on a peripatetic basis to get it off the ground. It would increase exposure of the subject to the teaching staff so that hopefully more would be drawn into the short course and some of the initial batch could be trained up to offer a fuller course to the pupils who have an interest and aptitude for it.

    3. Vinyl-Junkie

      Re: It's a shame we don't see programming as a basic skill

      Well said Maffski!

      If I want to read a good book, I don't write one! So if I want a good app, or a good game, why should I need to be able to program it myself?

      The skills that underpin programming, such as workflow analysis, flow-charting and specification writing will stand you in good stead in many career fields. Code-writing, not so much (and I say this as someone who used to write code but has since moved on).

    4. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Re: It's a shame we don't see programming as a basic skill

      > writing is left to a few chosen ones

      Not really. Everyone writes emails, reports, tweets, faecesbook posts, and from the looks of the typically illiterate spelling and grammar, it's not a basic skill these days.

      1. J.G.Harston Silver badge

        Re: It's a shame we don't see programming as a basic skill

        THAT'S.

        NOT.

        COMPUTING.

        SCIENCE,.

        THAT'S.

        I.

        T.

        Cars are everywhere now, therefore everybody should be an automotive engineer.

        No. Everybody (who is capable) should be able TO DRIVE.

    5. PNGuinn
      Mushroom

      Re: It's a shame we don't see programming as a basic skill

      +1 for mentioning UEFI and systemd in the same sentence!

      Both perfect examples of antiKISS.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Graduate

    Graduate ... From high school. Haha 'murica.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Graduate

      AC, your wit and your spelling both indicate that you have not ever "graduated" from grade school.

      Please find another hobby, besides trolling.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Graduate

        On the contrary Anon, at least 5 other people found the incongruence of graduating from secondary school to be worthy of an upvote (or some other reason of their own).

        You don't graduate from the compulsory part of your education. You just leave.

  5. Pen-y-gors

    Wrong subject

    For all I know this may still be the case, but when I was at St Andrews University back in the 70s it was not possible to graduate in the Arts Faculty without passing the first year philosophy course. And no student was admitted, whatever their subject, without at least a GCSE in a foreign language. A well rounded education is built on solid foundations - and learning a few basic bits of coding that will be out-of-date in a couple of years isn't part of that foundation.

    Codoing is a useful skill, and we need plenty of skilled coders, but in the same way that we need skilled plumbers and electricians. We all need to know how to operate a light switch or turn on a tap, but we don't all need to understand how to safely install them. Same with computers - how to use one is important, but not how to make it run.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wrong subject

      Really? I think it's fucking pathetic that most people can't wire a plug, or do up a compression joint / taped thread.

      These are basic life skills, though as houses become more commodified, and people spend most of their lives in magical boxes they have no idea how anything works.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Wrong subject

        "I think it's fucking pathetic that most people can't wire a plug, or do up a compression joint / taped thread."

        Given the way plugs are moulded on to mains leads these days the first of those seems to be obsolete these days and sooner or later there'll probably be regulations preventing it. Knowing how to choose the correct replacement fuse is another matter although again that might be regulated into the hands of the sparkies.

      2. Cynical Observer
        Thumb Down

        Re: Wrong subject

        @AC

        You may think it pathetic that some people don't know how to wire plugs - and just to make you happy, have an additional rant that the applicable directive complies with European law - that no consumer device may be sold in Europe unless it comes with a plug fitted already.

        One of those nanny state moments that has prevented who knows how many accidental deaths - and if memory serves correctly it owes a huge thank you to the then Watchdog team at the BBC

        Sometimes we just evolve and do things better - well at least some of us do.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Wrong subject

          Bla bla bla.

          Substitute re-soldering a star-base LED into a solid-state lighting array, if you like. (The modern equivalent of changing a light bulb).

          The fact is, the millennial male is an absolute joke. "Help me! Help me! I'm a damsel in distress. Quick summon an expert on my phone app!".

          And I AM a millennial male.

    2. tiggity Silver badge

      Re: Wrong subject

      I went to St. Andrews at the start of the 80's (Science not Arts)

      I was allowed without a Foreign Language GCSE - but that was purely because our crappy comp limited us to only 8 GCSEs & timetabling prevented various subject combinations, so science heavy GCSE timetable meant no language option possible, they were OK with thatt

    3. Mike Flex

      Re: Wrong subject

      "Codoing is a useful skill, "

      Is co-doing the latest fashionable manglement-speak for team-working?

  6. Major N
    Pint

    That sub-headline. Pure genius. I raise a glass to you.

  7. disgruntled yank

    Another box checked off

    On the Chicago Public Schools website, the a page http://cps.edu/SchoolData/Pages/SchoolData.aspx gives various data sets on student performance. The "EXPLORE, PLAN and ACT Growth and Attainment Report for 2014 and 2015", described as the city's primary assessment measures for students in grades 9 through 11, shows the percent meeting or exceeding college readiness levels for various subject areas in 11th grade as English 44%; Math 23%; Reading 21%; Science 16%. The readiness levels decline from 9th through 11th grade, so it seems unlikely that 12th grade, the last year of high school is much better.

    So is "computer science" really what the schools need? And how much of it will you teach to students struggling with reading and math? I would answer "not really" and "not that much". There is a weakness here (and I suppose not just here) for imagining that a shiny curriculum is what a school system chiefly needs, and that having drawn it up, the work is all but done. I am not surprised to see Chicago believing it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Another box checked off

      Yes there IS a problem with city school districts everywhere. If the little darlings are unable to comprehend, they just get sent up to the next grade so the so called "teachers" get a good evaluation and bonus and the "student" becomes someone elses problem. It is considered "unfair" and "racist" to hold someone back if they didn't learn the subject. Boo, hoo, waah!

      Perhaps if "teachers" were more concerned about the students actually learning something instead of getting a positive evaluation and bonus; then there might be less crime and unemployment.

      Perhaps if students were more interested in LEARNING something instead of what Kanye or some Kardassian was doing, THEY might actually have an income stream, stop blaming other people for their own shortcomings and continually looking for hand outs from government. All they have to do is look in the mirror to find someone responsible for their predicament.

      1. Kurt Meyer

        Re: Another box checked off

        @AC

        You made some good points in your post, but I've given you a downvote, and I'll tell you why.

        I was looking for three words which I did not see.

        "Perhaps if parents"

  8. jake Silver badge

    One credit?

    Uh ... so I guess they will need to show they will have to learn to logout so nobody will be able to take over their account?

    Computer work ain't for everybody. One wonders what would happen if they decided to make all the kids get one credit in metal-working, wood-working, auto repair, logging, fishing, gardening, cooking, swimming, animal care, bread making, institutional laundry, framing, HVAC, and paving.

    The mind absolutely boggles.

    1. chivo243 Silver badge

      Re: One credit?

      @jake

      Yes, some standards in the US are wet finger work. Lick your finger, stick it in the air. My High School only required one credit of Science. Half of that was fulfilled with a required Health class... go figure?

      it's beyond boggles...

    2. User McUser
      Megaphone

      Re: One credit?

      Computer work ain't for everybody. One wonders what would happen if they decided to make all the kids get one credit in metal-working, wood-working, auto repair, logging, fishing, gardening, cooking, swimming, animal care, bread making, institutional laundry, framing, HVAC, and paving

      I don't know about you, but that's basically how my Jr High/High School experience worked.

      We had to take two semesters of Home Economics (cooking, sewing, nutrition, and other basic domestic skills), 4 semesters of Industrial Tech (woodworking, basic construction and engineerring principles, internal combustion engines, and metal work skills including 3 types of welding), Physical Education every semester (baseball, football, American football, tennis, golf, bowling, swimming, track-and-field, and more) and that was just Jr. High (6th-8th grade.)

      In High School we had a choice of additional curriculum including Farming related classes, various trade-related courses in Electronics, Carpentry, Plumbing, automotive tech, Computer programming, Radio/TV, and more.

      So a few kids who aren't going to ever write a single line of code outside of that class are forced into taking it. So what? I took all sorts of math classes that I rarely use, chemistry, physics, biology, and history are likewise rarely used in my everyday life, if ever. Shall we eliminate those as well?

      I strongly believe in exposing children to as many different and diverse courses as can be squeezed into their education. Principles in different disciplines can be applied to other areas - you may never write a single line of code but the Boolean logic you learned from your CS class can be applied to installing two wall switches to control a single lamp (an XOR circuit) in your future job as an electrician.

      Finally, did it not occur to you that there might be kids out there who don't know that they want to be a programmer until they sit down and start programming and find that they're really good at it?

      1. Windrose

        Re: One credit?

        "So what?"

        What - they'll bloody well be hired as programmers, thats "what".

  9. Vinyl-Junkie
    Go

    GIven the number of stories....

    ..and complaints on these forums about the ignorance of users and their inability to do the simplest tasks at the other end of a phone I can only see it as a good thing if these kids are taught the difference between the OS and the apps that run on it, what an IP address is, how to run something when the icon goes missing, the fundamentals of device security, how to allow a remote support session.... and those sort of really basic IT skills. If adopted widely at least it would mean that the next generation of support staff won't have to deal with the woeful level of ignorance that we had to, such as "my email isn't working" when the whole PC is borked....

    1. tfewster
      Facepalm

      Re: GIven the number of stories....

      Awww, isn't that sweet? After all those years in IT, Vinyl-Junkie still has some optimism left that 1) A government-written curriculum might be relevant, 2) Lusers won't be lusers and 3) First-line support will ever be anything but the "Helldesk".

      Bitter, moi?

  10. Stevie

    Bah!

    Prediction: Microsoft Office user certification.

  11. Paratrooping Parrot
    Boffin

    What they need is a course on how to use computers and the Internet safely. They don't need a full blown computer course in coding. Maybe the bit about project planning and requirements that are needed in other fields.

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