Computer Science Is Now a Graduation Requirement in Chicago’s Public Schools | Hacker News Reader

Computer Science Is Now a Graduation Requirement in Chicago’s Public Schools

techcrunch.com

15 pointsknoxa25116 comments

This sounds like a terrible idea for two reasons.

Firstly that in order to maintain an acceptable pass rate the requirement standards will be dumbed down.

Secondly that this will then diminish genuine qualifications and interest in the field of Computer Science itself.

We have seen this exact thing happen in the UK, which had an early lead in software thanks to a vibrant microcomputer scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The government made "I.T." a major part of the school curriculum, taught by teachers who had little more I.T. skills than any other member of the general population, and which ended up being all about how to use Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Nett Result: falling Computer Science Rolls in UK Universities - basically they succeeded in largely killing kids interests in computers.

This couldn't be more correct. I'm a student at a UK University studying Computing Science and if I didn't learn in my own time and become passionate about the field then I would never have chosen to study this - secondary schools introduce students to Computer Science in absolutely the wrong way and kill off interest from the high achieving students who take other STEM subjects.

One of the guys who started this gave a talk at Chicago's OpenGov Hack Night about a year and a half ago. I honestly don't remember much about it, except for a huge feeling of "meh". A class on excel would be better than the crap they showed.

Flooding the (tech) market and lowering the average wage of "experts" in the field in 5+ years.

If anyone thought having high school level tech skills alone made them insulted from competition they were in for a rude awakening regardless.

The market has been flooded for a while. It's not a shortage of quantity but of quality.

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