Because this week, Dec. 7—13, is Computer Science Education Week, BlackEnterprise.com sat down with Jeffrey R.N. Forbes, associate professor of the practice of computer science at Duke University, to discuss computer science education and how essential it is to address it through the lens of social justice.
Last month, Forbes was named chair of the ACM Education Policy Committee, a high-level group of computer scientists and educators dedicated to improving opportunities for quality education in computer science and computing education around the world. In this role, Forbes and other committee members will play an important role in developing initiatives aimed at shaping education policy that affects computing education.
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BlackEnterprise.com:Â Why is computer science so important?
Forbes: It’s interesting, I worked at the National Science Foundation from 2011 to 2014, and at that time, if you talked about computer science education, people were confused about what that meant. But now you’re starting to see parents ask about what opportunities there are for their children in school; the computing community is really rallying around that. The Education Policy Committee has the ability to make sure that access to quality computer science education is available to a broader set of students than currently has been the case.
It is certainly true that schools with more resources tend to offer advanced placement computer science. We often focus on AP because we can very clearly identify what they’re actually doing. In schools that have fewer resources that say they have a computer science course, what they actually have is a typing course, or a course in how to use Microsoft Word.
So one of the things that ACM has been pushing successfully for is getting people to understand that computer science does not just mean being a consumer of computer technology. It means actually creating technology, writing programs, engaging with computational tools in a real academic way. So we now have twice as many schools offering AP computer science as we did four years ago, but it’s important to recognize that the percentage of schools offering it has gone down over 20 years, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Retaining high-quality computer science teachers is a challenge. We were involved in a project that took unemployed IT people who worked as teachers. But after the economy improved, they left. Or schools’ budgets were crunched during the recession and the first teachers they let go are the computer science teachers because computer science courses aren’t required.
So what’s going to happen? In addition to getting more high quality computer science courses out there, we want them to fulfill a high school graduation or university entry requirement; that would make high quality computing education sustainable.
What is the significance of the AP computer science course?
AP is a lever that provides reliable statistics and some fidelity of replication–a more or less standardized approach, and there’s going to be a new one next year: AP Computer Science Principles is designed fundamentally around participation in computer science, whereas the old course focused on programming. The new one clearly shows the connection to all the incredible things you can do in computer science, which was not always clear with the old course–which some described as tedious and painful.
The new course is a broad view of computing designed to engage students. It looks at the creative aspects and the societal impact of computing. Many colleges have gotten behind it. Using AP as a kind of gauge doesn’t solve everything because so many schools don’t offer it. It’s important to note that AP computer science has a much lower percentage of African Americans taking it than AP calculus.
So, even schools that have resources to offer an AP calculus course may not be offering a computer science course, or African American students may not be taking the course.
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Why do you think that is?
It can be a resource issue–you need computers to take computer science, and you need qualified teachers. I’ve already mentioned the challenge of recruiting and retaining qualified teachers. I also believe that professional development of teachers should focus on equity, and on what we can do as instructors to encourage a diverse set of students in our courses, and to see the excellence in those students.
The only background needed to take computer science is algebra. There’s no reason why the percentages couldn’t be much better. Another question to ask is: are people equally aware of the opportunities and pathways that a computing career can provide? One of the things the committee is looking into is how we can recruit and retain African American students who have a high interest in the field but are not highly represented.
I think this is an important social justice problem. At this point, the people that are leading the
technology industry, not only are they missing all the insight they could be getting from a diverse workforce and more diverse leaders, but there are opportunities to set society’s agenda that African Americans are not engaging in as much as we could be. With a high quality computer science degree, you’re likely to have a good career, and since computing is now so ubiquitous, you don’t need to work as a software engineer. You can take a computing background and go do a lot of things.In what other areas?
In the future it will hurt you not to have a computer science degree—the same way that being able to write well is essential in every industry. We won’t be able to say, ‘I can’t do that part of it. I can’t even understand that part of it.’ It will be that essential, depending, obviously, on your discipline. But it’s interesting to hear other scientists now saying that they wish they’d taken computer science. It’s becoming the fourth pillar of science. There’s so much that’s computational now–and it particularly concerns me that this could exacerbate inequality. That’s why I’m very excited about being appointed chair. We’re not making nearly as much progress as we should.
Sometimes statistics can make things seem better or worse than they really are. For example, 12%—13% of African Americans are earning B.S. degrees in computer science. But then when you look at Ph.D.-granting institutions, that number plummets; then look at schools that send people to places like Google and Facebook, and the number goes even lower.
African Americans are visible in only certain sections of the
computing industry–those areas then become less valued or have less impact on decision-making. A lot of this is because of a lack of access to high quality computer education. We need internships, mentorships, pathways, [and] role models that inspire African American students and positive engagement. They also need to know that failure is ok. You must deal with failure when dealing with computers.What kind of effect on policy do you expect the ACM Education Policy Committee to have? There is no national education policy.
Right, but we can exert influence by exploring the state of computer science education in each state. We can examine the backgrounds of people in the computer science industry so we’ll know what we need to replicate. In the U.S., education is a local thing, but there’s lots of ‘viral spread’ in education reform. If you have success in places like New York, Chicago, L.A., that will impact schools in North Carolina. Our role is to inform the community. We can say, here’s what’s happening, here are some exemplars; here’s the way we think people can move forward.
What do you think of hackathons?
I think hackathons done well are a good idea. There is a danger for some hackathons to reinforce some of the less good attributes of computing culture, such as being overly competitive, and some are less diverse than computing classes, so it’s important that they engage underrepresented students. But they are great in the sense that within 24 to 36 hours something pretty cool can be developed.
For more information about Computer Science Education Week, go to https://csedweek.org/.