New technology requirement? Full year class for middle school.

[Anonymous]

Not political really but just a concern for parents in Virginia.

HB694 has been proposed by Delegate Simonds. It would REQUIRE that all MS students take a year-long class on technology. This would take students out of elective classes mostly in the fine arts area and early foreign language electives. This bill should go before part of the Education committee on Monday, Jan. 27 at 7:30 a.m.
https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?ses=201&typ=bil&val=hb694&fbclid=IwAR1gF5T2IhSlmY_3rY5g5NppB8Rod8rbLzNsXumF4ea5aES1BuLddPB_MHQ

Middle school students do not get many electives - maybe 1 a year or 2 1/2 year classes.

These delegates are on the committee that will vote on Monday.
VanValkenburg (Richmond area)(Chair), Bulova (Fairfax-Robinson, Westfield, Woodson, Fairfax HS's), Guzman(Prince William), Subramanyam(Loudoun), Guy(VaBeach), Marshall (Danville), Robinson(Chesterfield), Davis (Va Beach), Tyler (Southside VA) . Eileen Filler-Corn is mine.
Google Who is my VA legislator for addresses.

[Anonymous]

Maybe you should advocate getting rid of PE for the year that the student is required to take the tech class.

[Anonymous]

I'm a software engineer. I'm struggling to think of myself getting anything valuable out of a lot of those topics (algorithms? things that are parts of philosophy of computing? cybersecurity?) at a middle school level. Those are things that were mostly introduced in the 300 level classes when I was studying CS in college, and re-touched on in grad school at a deeper level. What in the world is a 7th grader going to get out of an algorithms class without the foundation of, say, boolean logic?

I'm all for getting kids to think critically about technology's role in our society and their lives, and for bringing up a generation of socially responsible programmers, but I'm really struggling to see how this proposed bill is going to do that.

[Anonymous]

THANK YOU for posting OP.

What a ridiculous idea.

[Anonymous]

What these adults don't realize is that even the middle schoolers can dance circles around the teachers when it comes to computers and technology.

Unless they plan to rotate through a fresh stream of 22 year old college graduates to teach the class each year, it will essentially be a dated, worthless reauirement.

[Anonymous]

High school is already so rigid and regimented in terms of class requirements.

Let the middle schoolers enrich and explore, to dabble and experiment.

There is no reason to slap this kind of requirement on our 6th, 7th and 8th graders.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What these adults don't realize is that even the middle schoolers can dance circles around the teachers when it comes to computers and technology.

Unless they plan to rotate through a fresh stream of 22 year old college graduates to teach the class each year, it will essentially be a dated, worthless reauirement.

As a CS person who has taken CS classes at pretty much every level of education, I would hope that's not entirely true. Otherwise what is TJ doing with all it's CS classes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What these adults don't realize is that even the middle schoolers can dance circles around the teachers when it comes to computers and technology.

Unless they plan to rotate through a fresh stream of 22 year old college graduates to teach the class each year, it will essentially be a dated, worthless reauirement.

As a CS person who has taken CS classes at pretty much every level of education, I would hope that's not entirely true. Otherwise what is TJ doing with all it's CS classes?

NP here, but it's easy to see how a specialized magnet school whose mission requires not falling behind in tech knowledge could do so. If they don't stay ahead, they will be less attractive as a magnet.

Making tech ed a universal requirement everywhere flips those incentives. If everyone has to take it, the same number of people will attend whether it's actually useful or not. And in a general school environment with lots of different requirements and priorities, there's no reason for admins to scrutinize those classes because their job is to meet the state requirement, not to make sure each non-reading or math class isn't a joke.

Massachusetts had a similar requirement when I was in school. Tech Ed was a joke where a teacher who was trained in the early 80s tried to explain to middle school students how the Start menu works. But no one cared because why dump money or managerial attention into a program that's only there to check a box.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What these adults don't realize is that even the middle schoolers can dance circles around the teachers when it comes to computers and technology.

Unless they plan to rotate through a fresh stream of 22 year old college graduates to teach the class each year, it will essentially be a dated, worthless reauirement.

As a CS person who has taken CS classes at pretty much every level of education, I would hope that's not entirely true. Otherwise what is TJ doing with all it's CS classes?

NP here, but it's easy to see how a specialized magnet school whose mission requires not falling behind in tech knowledge could do so. If they don't stay ahead, they will be less attractive as a magnet.

Making tech ed a universal requirement everywhere flips those incentives. If everyone has to take it, the same number of people will attend whether it's actually useful or not. And in a general school environment with lots of different requirements and priorities, there's no reason for admins to scrutinize those classes because their job is to meet the state requirement, not to make sure each non-reading or math class isn't a joke.

Massachusetts had a similar requirement when I was in school. Tech Ed was a joke where a teacher who was trained in the early 80s tried to explain to middle school students how the Start menu works. But no one cared because why dump money or managerial attention into a program that's only there to check a box.

PP here. That makes sense. I've been reading and re-reading the bill trying to figure out what middle schoolers can even get out of the buzz word-y list of topics, and what you describe sounds like about it. Ugh. Hope this gets utterly blown away.

[Anonymous]

I think it's a worthwhile endeavor. Most topics can be taught to fit the audience level. I think getting kids interested in STEM at a young age is important. I'm fully supportive of learning foreign languages, which a pp said would be one of the things sacrificed that years. Having said that, the way foreign languages are taught in this country, very few people come away being able to speak a language at even a basics level. One year of not having space for a foreign language isn't going to have any real impact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What these adults don't realize is that even the middle schoolers can dance circles around the teachers when it comes to computers and technology.

Unless they plan to rotate through a fresh stream of 22 year old college graduates to teach the class each year, it will essentially be a dated, worthless reauirement.

As a CS person who has taken CS classes at pretty much every level of education, I would hope that's not entirely true. Otherwise what is TJ doing with all it's CS classes?

NP here, but it's easy to see how a specialized magnet school whose mission requires not falling behind in tech knowledge could do so. If they don't stay ahead, they will be less attractive as a magnet.

Making tech ed a universal requirement everywhere flips those incentives. If everyone has to take it, the same number of people will attend whether it's actually useful or not. And in a general school environment with lots of different requirements and priorities, there's no reason for admins to scrutinize those classes because their job is to meet the state requirement, not to make sure each non-reading or math class isn't a joke.

Massachusetts had a similar requirement when I was in school. Tech Ed was a joke where a teacher who was trained in the early 80s tried to explain to middle school students how the Start menu works. But no one cared because why dump money or managerial attention into a program that's only there to check a box.

At my DC's MS, there are wonderful teacher who volunteer to teach after school STEM activities. Your experience was years ago.

[Anonymous]

^^^teachers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What these adults don't realize is that even the middle schoolers can dance circles around the teachers when it comes to computers and technology.

Unless they plan to rotate through a fresh stream of 22 year old college graduates to teach the class each year, it will essentially be a dated, worthless reauirement.

As a CS person who has taken CS classes at pretty much every level of education, I would hope that's not entirely true. Otherwise what is TJ doing with all it's CS classes?

NP here, but it's easy to see how a specialized magnet school whose mission requires not falling behind in tech knowledge could do so. If they don't stay ahead, they will be less attractive as a magnet.

Making tech ed a universal requirement everywhere flips those incentives. If everyone has to take it, the same number of people will attend whether it's actually useful or not. And in a general school environment with lots of different requirements and priorities, there's no reason for admins to scrutinize those classes because their job is to meet the state requirement, not to make sure each non-reading or math class isn't a joke.

Massachusetts had a similar requirement when I was in school. Tech Ed was a joke where a teacher who was trained in the early 80s tried to explain to middle school students how the Start menu works. But no one cared because why dump money or managerial attention into a program that's only there to check a box.

At my DC's MS, there are wonderful teacher who volunteer to teach after school STEM activities. Your experience was years ago.

Not the quoted PP, but at my DC's ES the guy in charge of the school network was teaching the after school robotics class. For the first several weeks, he couldn't get the software to work on the schools' computers. So...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What these adults don't realize is that even the middle schoolers can dance circles around the teachers when it comes to computers and technology.

Unless they plan to rotate through a fresh stream of 22 year old college graduates to teach the class each year, it will essentially be a dated, worthless reauirement.

As a CS person who has taken CS classes at pretty much every level of education, I would hope that's not entirely true. Otherwise what is TJ doing with all it's CS classes?

NP here, but it's easy to see how a specialized magnet school whose mission requires not falling behind in tech knowledge could do so. If they don't stay ahead, they will be less attractive as a magnet.

Making tech ed a universal requirement everywhere flips those incentives. If everyone has to take it, the same number of people will attend whether it's actually useful or not. And in a general school environment with lots of different requirements and priorities, there's no reason for admins to scrutinize those classes because their job is to meet the state requirement, not to make sure each non-reading or math class isn't a joke.

Massachusetts had a similar requirement when I was in school. Tech Ed was a joke where a teacher who was trained in the early 80s tried to explain to middle school students how the Start menu works. But no one cared because why dump money or managerial attention into a program that's only there to check a box.

At my DC's MS, there are wonderful teacher who volunteer to teach after school STEM activities. Your experience was years ago.

Is your argument that after-school, volunteer-taught, attendance optional STEM activities at a single school are somehow going to be the same as a universal, mandatory class taught offered at every single school? Because it sounds like the exact opposite of what's being proposed.

My experience was years ago, but the incentives are exactly the same. Your experience might have been recent, but still differs from the proposal in every important aspect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What these adults don't realize is that even the middle schoolers can dance circles around the teachers when it comes to computers and technology.

Unless they plan to rotate through a fresh stream of 22 year old college graduates to teach the class each year, it will essentially be a dated, worthless reauirement.

As a CS person who has taken CS classes at pretty much every level of education, I would hope that's not entirely true. Otherwise what is TJ doing with all it's CS classes?

NP here, but it's easy to see how a specialized magnet school whose mission requires not falling behind in tech knowledge could do so. If they don't stay ahead, they will be less attractive as a magnet.

Making tech ed a universal requirement everywhere flips those incentives. If everyone has to take it, the same number of people will attend whether it's actually useful or not. And in a general school environment with lots of different requirements and priorities, there's no reason for admins to scrutinize those classes because their job is to meet the state requirement, not to make sure each non-reading or math class isn't a joke.

Massachusetts had a similar requirement when I was in school. Tech Ed was a joke where a teacher who was trained in the early 80s tried to explain to middle school students how the Start menu works. But no one cared because why dump money or managerial attention into a program that's only there to check a box.

At my DC's MS, there are wonderful teacher who volunteer to teach after school STEM activities. Your experience was years ago.

Is your argument that after-school, volunteer-taught, attendance optional STEM activities at a single school are somehow going to be the same as a universal, mandatory class taught offered at every single school? Because it sounds like the exact opposite of what's being proposed.

My experience was years ago, but the incentives are exactly the same. Your experience might have been recent, but still differs from the proposal in every important aspect.

So you think they will hire 80 year old teachers who will only teach how to use the start menu. Ok.