Education in America is on the cusp of a dramatic change. Will the country let it happen?
Kids these days: Are they ready for the next generation of jobs? Whether there’s truly a shortage of engineers and scientists in the global workforce, either now or in the near future, is actually still amatter of debate.
In the US, that speculation is certainly being treated seriously.
Pressure has been mounting for some years now to bolster the country’s educational standards in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields, and the White House is now attempting to answer the call with a $4 billion proposal to bring computer science to K-12 students all over the country. Unveiled Feb. 9 as part of the Obama administration’s2017 education budget, the program is hugely ambitious—if perhaps also a little questionable in its efficacy: As critics have pointed out, $4 billion is chump change next to the country’s overall half-trillion-dollar education budget, and the plan hinges on “continued investments” from states and districts.
More pointedly, there are few hopes that this budget, the last to be submitted by US president Barack Obama, will be embraced by the Republican-controlled Congress. But to the extent the document represents the sitting president’s vision for the nation’s educational system, it highlights an intriguing shift in American attitudes toward teaching and learning.
“We have to make sure all our kids are equipped for the jobs of the future—which means not just being able to work with computers, but developing the analytical and coding skills to power our innovation economy,” Obama said in a Jan. 30 address explaining his Computer Science for All initiative.
What the administration suggests raises an important question about the intrinsic purpose of education. Might it be reoriented, even at the elementary-school level, as more than an important intellectual pursuit—but also a tool for economic gain?
A soaring goal of—what, exactly?
There’s no shortage of research on the need for STEM workers in the US. Standouts include a Brookings report in 2014 that found STEM job vacancies take twice as long as other positions to fill, and a 2012 National Science Foundation study noting that the country’s science and engineering workforce, between 1950 and 2009, has grown 15 times faster than the country’s population. Obama’s proposal is quite obviously an attempt to address these gaps.
Implementation, unlike the idea, definitely wouldn’t be straightforward. Schools and districts would have to rework their basic curriculums, schedules, and hiring processes; though several Silicon Valley giants like Google and Facebook have pledged some form of support to these changes, the grunt work is due to occur at the local level. Just training teachers in computer science is a giant endeavor on its own.
The country will essentially “have to start from scratch—start with teachers the way we would start with children,” Barbara Stengel, a professor at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development, tells Quartz.
But the practical barriers to putting computer science education in Education in America is on the cusp of a dramatic change. Will the country let it happen? - Quartz:
