Obama Pledges $4B to Computer Science in US Schools

If you're going to inspire students you're going to need a lot of teachers who are experts in CS. Unfortunately, our current education system doesn't allow experts to teach so now someone who knows CS is going to have to go get an education degree as well, just to take a massive pay cut.

How about he reforms patent law further first? Not much good having computer scientists innovating if some patent troll comes along and stymies that innovation.

People are intelligent in many different ways and I don't believe that most people have the abstract thinking skills necessary to really thrive in computer science.

Forcing everybody to take part in computer science education is probably going to frustrate the hell out of most people (make them feel stupid and annoyed at having to do this stuff) and dumb down the curriculum for the small percentage of kids who would naturally thrive at this stuff.

Also, given the insanity in the education field, I don't see too many actually good computer science teachers wanting to be there even if more money is being thrown around. If I had to guess, a lot more career minded Machiavellian types are going to be trying to grab onto the gravy train and get some of these gigs and the side effect of this will be that the kids get even crappier teachers.

Like most government programs, on the surface this sounds good. I could very well be wrong, but like most government programs it will probably end up costing more money than planned and have the opposite of its intended effect.

I don't know, I think this is more of a "Computer Science is the new Math" approach. My only concern is, what programs will be cut to make room for this program? And you know all schools will do this because government funding!

The real problem is not computer science.

Everyone in the United States cannot be a programmer - its going to lead to the same problem we have with law, business, etc. Too many graduates leading to labour oversupply.

Government will always be slower to respond then markets.

So even though right now there is a shortage of programmers - it might not be the case once these student's graduate.

So Govt is always one step behind the movements in markets.

What is more important is helping students understand how important learning is. Even though my skills in programming helps me get paid - I use the knowledge I have in biology ( learnt in school ) to make informed decisions as a consumer. My knowledge in writing helps when I need to explain a difficult concept to my bosses. My skills in mathematics helps me model problems in much more efficient ways.

Being a programmer in a society with no doctors, or chemists is no fun.

Its understanding that the economy is extremely complex - and rather than create bursts of inefficiency in one area - the best thing to do is facilitate the system to perform better - maybe make it easier for labour ( students ) to choose what they want to do with their lives - rather than burden them with student debt ?