The Kids Are Not Alright, Why Johnny can't
compute
Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate
The school reform movement is badly in need of reform. Right now, our nation's
most prominent school reformers are almost totally ignoring one item that could go a long
way toward improving our failing public schools: increasing the quantity and quality of
computer programming instruction.
To say we have a crisis in this area is to grossly understate the problem.
Nearly every high-tech CEO I meet tells me the kids coming out of even our best public
schools don't have the skills needed to land a good job. On the verge of the 21st century,
most employers are lucky if they can find high school graduates with a competitive 19th
century skill set.
Years ago, someone with a good high school education had a running shot at
earning a living. Today, a high school diploma means practically nothing. Often, it's
little more than a ticket to the streets.
Blaming those who run our schools is the easy way out. Politicians from both
political parties frequently play that card, perhaps because public opinion polls say
education-reform is now one of the hottest political issues. The problem is, most of the
would-be school reformers who are trying to ride the issue into public office, or use it
to keep the job they already have, don't seem to have a clue about what our schools really
need.
If you listen to kids, though, they'll tell you the real problem is they are not
being taught what they need to learn to get ahead.
They know they're being cheated, particularly in the area of computer
programming. They know that in the next century, computer programming skills will be as
important as writing and math were in this century.
The world has changed far too much since most teachers went to college for us to
think that what they learned then is all our kids need to know now. If we don't teach the
teachers more current computer skills, we'll continue to be saddled with a public school
system where the blind lead the blind. If that's the case, it won't matter whether
students wear uniforms or pray themselves silly.
Even seemingly more important reforms, such as smaller classes or increased
teacher salaries, won't make much of a difference either. Unless we change things real
quick, when it comes to modern computer sciences, the only thing most public school
teachers will be able to offer their students is their own ignorance.
Right now, despite the growing importance of computers, most public school
teachers couldn't program a computer if their lives depended on it. That's why we need an
immediate, crash program to retrain our current generation of public school teachers in
the art and science of computer programming. Nothing else could do as much to close the
growing gap between our public schools, on the one hand, and our economy and society on
the other.
To be sure, the paucity of computer programming classes in public schools
doesn't completely, all by itself, explain growing levels of youthful alienation.
But one thing is clear: If we don't give kids the tools they need to find their
place in our fast-changing world, they will eventually start looking for other,
easier-to-find tools that can help them destroy that world, or just as troubling, simply
obliterate themselves.
In a telling index of how bad things are, it's often far easier today for most
kids, particularly those in urban settings, to find someone who can sell them a gun and
teach them how to use it than it is for them to get help learning how to program a
computer. That's a recipe for an increasingly sick society.
So, how much progress are public schools making in this regard?
Unfortunately, at least as far as I can see, no one in authority really seems to
care. It's almost impossible, for example, to even find current data about the number of
public school teachers who are qualified to teach computer programming, let alone
information about which approaches work best.
We need to turn this situation around. We should be tracking which public
schools do and do not offer different kinds of computer programming classes. We need to
find out which approaches work best and replicate them.
We should also send teachers back to school more frequently so they can acquire
the skills today's students need to learn. That might mean, for example, allowing teachers
to take six months or a year off from teaching every few years to refresh their skills. Or
paying them to use their summer vacations for similar purposes.
We also need new mechanisms to get high-tech businesses more deeply involved in
our public schools. Some high-tech businesses are already doing this. But they might do
more if we had a better system for rewarding businesses that bring knowledge of
cutting-edge skills into our public schools.
We could let an employee teach computer programming classes in a public school
four days a month, for example, in exchange for tax breaks that more than make up whatever
the company might lose in the process. We also need more student computer programming
contests, and other academic exercises, to give students an incentive to learn and reasons
to dream.
Today's computer programming instruction deficit is analogous to the literacy
deficit that existed early in this century. One hundred years ago, large numbers of people
didn't need to know how to read and write in order to survive. All they needed to know was
their trade. A blacksmith, for example, mostly had to know how to shoe a horse.
Over time, though, society's growing dependence on the written word put
illiterate workers at a substantial disadvantage. The ability to read and write moved from
being a skill needed in only a few professions to one required by nearly all.
The same thing is happening today with computer programming. It's not just for
computer programmers anymore. Virtually every profession is being touched by developments
in computer sciences. It doesn't matter if your kid wants to be a doctor, a lawyer, an
engineer or a businessperson.
In the future, the best jobs in nearly every sector will go to those who know
how to use today's penultimate tool, the computer, most effectively. It's the difference
between teaching kids how to be consumers and helping them become producers.
Today's public school students will turn our schools around themselves if and
when they get a more meaningful education. They want, and need, to learn how to create new
computer games and programs, not just use them.
But to make that happen we need to convince those leading the school reform
movement to abandon their current obsession with marginal issues such as mandatory
uniforms or prayer in the public schools. Instead, we need to marshal the resources it
will take to create more relevant classes, particularly computer programming courses.
Otherwise, if we continue to leave the kids behind, some of them will no doubt
find some rather unpleasant ways to thank us for that favor.
CNBC.com Silicon Valley correspondent Hal Plotkin thinks high school principals
should be fired if more than half of their graduating seniors don't know that REM is not
just a musical group. hplotkin@sfgate.com
