Many researchers in the field of technology education worry that high school students are not given the opportunity to learn the "science of computers" (ref). Among other reasons, they claim that computer science in high schools is not being taught because of limited funding.
Having been involved with tax levies to support public education, I know that there is way too little funding available for secondary education. First and foremost, the teachers are severely underpaid. Second, the students are not given the opportunity to participate in enriching activities because all the available funding goes to providing the basic elements of education. Money for education has been stripped down to the point where even reading, writing and math are taught on a shoestring.
Americans are worried that in the future all of our jobs will be outsourced. They whine on and on about how Americans should employ other Americans and help from people in other countries is unnecessary. The problem is, with the current public education system, soon there won't be any more American companies. Future generations will not have been properly tooled for owning their own businesses and/or ascending to the position of CEO at an already established country.
I agree with the article in many respects. It is important for high school students to be given the exposure to a wide variety of fields. Only through this dabbling with many things will students find their place. This leaves computer science as an elective course. It, along with mechanical engineering, domestic engineering, orchestra, band, choir, drama and other specialized classes should remain elective until the proper amount of funding is available for core subjects. Then, we can begin to demand that our students become well-rounded.
I benefited greatly from taking high school courses that taught all of these subjects. I know that without them, my understanding on the interconnection between disciplines would be limited. If the thinkers of tomorrow don't understand how A impacts B, then great ideas may go unnoticed or undeveloped.
However, information science should become mandatory. The Internet can be a great thing, but it must be used responsibly. Students, starting in grade school, research reports using the Internet. By the time they reach high school and college, they've become too reliant on the Internet for scholarly papers. Not everything on the Internet is true. But, some of it is. How do you tell the difference between the signal and the noise? How do you determine what is authoritative and what is opinion? I can't even do that reliably when I read news.google.com.
So, I think that if any new class should be mandatory in education, it should be this information science class. This class should teach the proper uses of the Internet and the proper use of the computer in the academic world. For instance, how to cite Internet data correctly. How to verify the information found on the Internet. How to avoid taking opinion for fact. How to use the Internet to access texts that may not be available in the local library. How to use the Internet to access microfiche, or other archived data.
Just ask librarians what they think about this. You'll probably get an earful.
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I'd like to recommend Savage Inequalities to anyone interested in the state of public schools in America. Its not a fun read, but definitely eye-opening.
As for a manditory IS class, I'm still a bit skeptical. I took a class in "Computers" (read: Word -- actually Mircosoft Works!) as well as Computer Science. The CS class was run by the Calc teacher, an extremely nice guy, and good teacher, but unfortunately he didn't know much of anything about programming. The "Word" class, was completely useless. We learned how to create templated letters, so you could pull the names out of a spreadsheet. Super. Unfortunately, this was using a program that was out-of-date in 1995 (I took the class in '97), and the next time I needed anything vaguely similar, it was ~2002, and I had to learn it on the current version of Word. I think part of the problem here is that there really aren't any "fundamentals" of IS -- That is things that don't change with the lastest generation of technology.
So, at least in my experience, you would have to get a significantly more sophisticated ciriculum, and possibly staff in order to teach anything meaningful in IS.
I agree with both of your points. I sat in the same room as a computer literacy class when I was taking an independent study in Pascal. They were taught how to use Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Of course, the documents, spreadsheets and presentations that they made were hideous.
However, I am not suggesting a howto on computer programs. I am suggesting a course that teaches critical analysis of document sources. I guess that this could apply not only to information from the Internet but also information presented in the television news, radio, etc.
They would learn how to search for credible information, how to dig deep into archived material, etc.
Sorry if I am not quite explaining it correctly.
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