[Edu-sig] Significant drop in CS interest in high schools

[Laura Creighton]

In a message of Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:07:53 CDT, Jeff Rush writes:

<snip>

>I'd love to get into the head of some of these decision makers - what
>wierd view do they have of CS?  They must imagine it being some luxury
>topic, some elective nice to have like Italian for advanced students but
>not something of basic literacy for all students.
>
>There is a difference between "this is what every citizen should know
>about computers/tech to understand the rapidly changing world around
>them" and "vocational training to become a professional programmer".
>
>-Jeff

When I lived in California, 15 years ago, I met some of these people.
I was fighting the removal of art classes from a high school.  I
showed up with a team of 5 commercial artists, all of whom were
willing to teach art, for free, after school.  And they wanted to
teach things like photoshop, too.  I was prepared for the school
admins not understanding why photoshop would be a useful thing to
learn.  What I wasn't prepared for was their complete and total
misunderstanding that it was possible to make a living by being an
artist.

They had art == hobby == superfluous and nothing was going to change
their minds about that.  They were proud of the fact that they were
discouraging people from taking art, and now finally preventing them
from wasting their time with this nonsense by killing the classes
altogether.  It was really depressing.  And they really weren't
going to listen no matter what we said.

Laura