Jan 96 Crabbs Apple
Volume Number: 12
Issue Number: 1
Column Tag: Crabb’s Apple
Tomorrow’s Developers 
By Don Crabb
I just spent a surprisingly enjoyable two days as a presenter and keynoter at the 10th
Annual Illinois Computing Educators conference in Addison, Illinois, outside Chicago. At
this conference, today’s K-12 educators met to discuss the latest computer software
and hardware, the lastest trends in computing pedagogy, the latest methods in computer
laboratory management, and the lastest methods for moving their kids onto the Internet
and the World Wide Web.
I say “surprisingly enjoyable,” because I found myself learning just as much
about the state of Illinois K-12 computer education as I taught about the state of
current computing technology and programming environments.
I learned that many of today’s kids, especially those in grades 7-12, are
chomping at the bit to learn the guts of computing, how and why it works, and not just
how much fun it can be. These expectations cut across racial and socioeconomic groups.
This information counters the widely-reported stereotype that only nerdy white boys
from wealthy suburban families are really interested in learning computer
programming, computer architecture, computer networking, and software
engineering.
What the thousand or so assembled teachers taught me was to forget that
perception as they told me one story after another about inner city African-American,
Hispanic, Asian, and other poor minority kids (girls and boys) who stayed after school
just to have a bit more time to use meager computer resources. And just how many of
these kids were not just computer-doodling, or banging the Internet and WWW for the
hell of it. These kids are demanding to be taught how to put computer technology to use
for themselves and their families and how to buy into the digital revolution.
And damnit, we’re the folks who ought to be stepping up to the task to make it
happen.
Despite the best intentions, programs, and efforts of the teachers I talked with,
the minority kids just aren’t getting the programming training they want and need.
Despite the best intentions, programs, and efforts of the school administrators I talked
with, the inner city kids just aren’t getting the programming training they want and
need. Despite the best intentions, programs, and efforts of the corporate donors I talked
with, the poor schools just aren’t getting the computer and networking resources they
want and need. And despite the best intentions, programs, and efforts of the
governmental educational chiefs I talked with, the poor, minority, inner city kids are
being overtly and covertly locked out of the digital revolution that is reshaping
America.
And damnit, we’re the folks who ought to be stepping up to the task to help fix
these problems.
This is no longer just an educational problem. It’s a problem of the future of this
country. Computing and digital information processing are the wave of the present and
the wave of the future. For as long as any prognosticators can see. And if we don’t start
digitally enfranchising all of our kids now, regardless of their race, or how much
money their families make, or what school they go to, we’re going to create a caste
system worse than any imagined in colonial India under the Raj. We’re going to create a
country where the haves and the havenots are not defined so much by bucks as by bytes.
The digital literati versus the digitally disadvantaged.
And damnit, we’re the folks who ought to be stepping up to the task of providing
the guidance, the resources, and the peoplepower to give our educators the tools and
software they need to extend the digital domain to all K-12 students, not just those
with the fancy multimedia PowerMac setup in the media room at home.
What I am suggesting here is simple, but executing it will require a real
committment on the part of individuals and their companies. Here we go:
1. Mac developers as a group are among the best programmers on the planet. That’s
not a boast, it’s a fact. Mac hardware and software companies as a group are
among the most innovative corporations you can find. That’s also not a boast, it’s
a reality forced on them by a MacOS market that often defies description, and by
their primary partner (Apple) that frequently defies logic.
2. Mac developers need a cause to rally around beside defeating Microsoft or
learning to be codependent with them.
3. The U.S. is at a crossroads in its ability to provide a proper computing education
for all of its schoolage kids.
4. Mac developers and their companies need to get involved supporting K-12
computer education efforts in the U.S., by offering their expertise, pro bono, on
how to improve and extend programming and computer engineering curricula; by
offering their services, pro bono, at teaching the teachers; by offering their
spare time, pro bono, towards creating killer computer pedagocial apps to help
the havenots catch up with the haves; and by offering donations of equipment,
networking resources, and software to make all of these initiatives work
together.
In short, what I am suggesting here is the private equivalent of a Vista or Peace
Corps for all American kids revolving around digital technology, with a strong
emphasis on programming and software development as keys to understanding how the
digital world is working and will work and how to make the most of it. Software and
hardware companies would grant paid release time to their developers to work in this
program and release time to their managers to establish it, staff it, and get it under
way.
Naturally, we’d buttonhole Apple to be the corporate bandwagon upon which we
could hitch our pedagocial wagons.
Let’s call this new initiative the Digital Corps of America (the idea makes sense
in many other countries, too). If you are interested in discussing this concept and want
to help organize it, drop me a line at decc@cs.uchicago.edu. I will try to organize some
electronic meeting forum or list to kick things off.
In the long run, with the Digital Corps of America we end up helping to “re-melt
the pot” Americans are so fond of thinking represents the American Way, but in a way
that makes sense in the Digital Age. And we help firmly establish the very computer
markets we are now trying to niche out in our daily struggles by creating a whole new
class of computer literate customers. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Referenced by (2):