Where are all the high school computer science students

Interesting post, actually several, at the CSTA blog lately One is called Where Are All the High School Computer Science Students- and it brings up some interesting things about CS education. I would call them misconceptions.

Computer Science is hard – Say what? Compared to what? Compared to calculus? I don’t think so. Compared to sinking a three-point shot with a six foot six defender guarding you during a basketball game? I don’t think so. Computer science does require that one actually thinks of course and perhaps we have too many students who are not used to that. But is that the problem of computer science? I don’t think so.

OK I’m having a little fun here. Computer Science is harder than some other subjects. Like, well I can’t think of a good example. I mean high school English would be pretty hard if students hadn’t already had 8 years of prior English training. Picture teaching HS English to someone who could not read or write in any language. You think that would be an easy course? And yet we do that with computer science. In some schools AP CS is the first computer course. Think about teaching AP Calc to someone who couldn’t add or subtract for a comparison.

Computer Science is boring – Again compared to what? I find it endlessly fascinating. But than I read history books for fun too and I’ve heard more than a few students call history boring. Perhaps the students who are finding computer science boring are just not paying attention? Or perhaps their teachers are working too hard at making the course boring. Perhaps the teachers would rather be teaching something else? Again, not the fault of the subject.

There are not jobs in computer science – Have you seen a list of open jobs for English majors lately? How about history majors? Math majors without computer science? Take a look at this list of top 50 occupations sometime. Two of the top 10 are computer science related. Elementary school teacher is more in demand but believe it or not the computer science jobs tend to pay more in case money is an issue for your students. :-)

So should we just wait and let students learn computer science in college? Think about that a minute. If having their first exposure in high school is “hard” wouldn’t having their first exposure in college be worse? I think so. Time to start teaching about computer science younger. Middle school is not too soon. Hopefully its not too late either.

I’ll be at SIGCSE this week and one of the things Microsoft will be showing is Kodu which is a game/tool/program to introduce some CS concepts to younger students. It will be interesting to see what discussions develop there.