An inexhaustible supply of... demand?

In the April 30 of The New York Review of Books, Andrew Hacker reviews the work of Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, the authors of The Race Between Technology & Education. (Hacker's article requires a subscription to NYRB).

Goldin and Katz, as I've discussed, attempt to quantify the advantages of an open, forgiving, evolving educational system in relation to economic growth. Their primary findings are that additional education returns higher incomes, a condition that increases demand for education; secondarily, this supply of highly skilled labor at its best evolves to meet the needs of the economy for a more technically skilled, analytically competent workforce.

But is any of this true? (And is it more true or less true of non-OECD countries?)

To counter the statements of Gilpin and Katz, Hacker cites the US government's Occupational Outlook Handbook, produced by the Bureau of Labor & Statistics, which projects growth of 1,400 occupations "from aerobics instructors to zoologists": 

In view of Goldin and Katz's concerns, it is relevant to ask if there is actually a demand for more people with technology-linked degrees.... I was surprised to learn that in 2006 the nation altogether had only 17,000 paid positions for physicists, apart from teachers, and that only 1,000 more openings are envisaged for 2016. The number of employed mathematicians is expected to rise from 3,000 to 3,300.... Employment for engineers is slated to grow from 1,512,000 to 1,671,000, about the same percentage of growth as for the workforce as a whole. Indeed, at current rates, 650,000 new engineers will have received degrees by 2016, four times the predicted number of openings. (Emphasis added - Ed)

At a minimum, these figures should give us pause in relation to the rush to promote STEM curricula (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics--which occupies a core part of the conventional wisdom around education reform in the U.S.). 

I checked in the Handbook on the 10-year outlook for computer programmers: a 4% drop from 435,000 programmers employed in 2006 to 417,000 employed in 2016. 

So what gives? Is the United States going to be offshoring jobs for professionals at such a high rate in 2016 that, well, its best and brightest will be emigrating to find employment? (Possibly....) 

But as Hacker opines, there are other significant opportunities for employment. The Handbook: 

...lists hundreds of jobs involved with high-tech instruments, including installing, repairing, and debugging them. These workers outnumber college-trained scientists, and even engineers. Here are some of the things they do: gynecologic sonography, geodetic surveying, avionic equipment mechanics, semiconductor processing, air traffic controlling, laboratory phlebotomy, blood bank clinical work, cryptanalysis keying. Yet these technicians are most often only high school graduates, sometimes with community college credits. Moreover, the knowledge they need is acquired mainly on the job, because that's where the equipment is.

Not all high-tech employers look for workers with degrees. By now, we can agree that European and Asian car-makers have taken the lead in using computer chips for ignition timing, fuel injection, and cylinder control. These devices must be expertly installed. And they are, by hourly workers on the assembly line.

Hacker goes on to cite four foreign carmakers who located plants in the U.S., and he provides the high-school drop-out rates for the counties where the plants landed: Nissan went for Tennesse (26.3%), BMW for South Carolina (26.9%), Honda for Alabama (28.7%), and Toyota for Mississippi (31.5%). And Hacker notes: 

...[T]hey look for states that offer tax waivers, are unwelcoming toward unions, and have pay rates below the national norm. But it apparently hasn't bothered BMW and Toyota that the countries they chose offer less-than-stellar schooling. Rather, they've found that even workers who were indifferent students can learn what's needed technically in the factory, as happens in the companies' home countries. 

All of this makes sense -- even while it discounts any other possible advantages that might accrue to individuals as a result of increased education. Per Gilpin and Katz, those advantages include higher wages; per boatloads of health-related studies, those advantages include improved health and longevity. But of course sorting out causation, as Gilpin and Katz purport to do, is much trickier than proving association. 

In any event, Gilpin and Katz in their book skip over compelling evidence as to the value of non-academic skills and knowledge in relation to economic performance and, to a lesser extent, individual wealth. 

Let's play guess the business model

The NY Times has a compelling article about Conficker malware, which was unleashed on Windows-based PCs in fall 2008, and that has since infected an estimated 5 million computers worldwide. (Although for reasons "unknown," original versions of the virus were programmed to avoid infecting computers that were physically based in Ukraine. Hmmm.)

One issue, among many, that has the Conficker Working Group stumped is that the virus has lain dormant for the most part throughout this period. However a slip-up of some sort on the part of the Working Group "allowed the programs authors to convert a huge number of the infected machines to an advanced peer-to-peer communications system that the industry group has not been able to defeat."

 

If the misbegotten computer were reactivated, it would not have the problem-solving ability of supercomputers used to design nuclear weapons or simulate climate change. But because it has commandeered so many machines, it could draw on an amount of computing power greater than that from any single computing facility run by governments or Google. It is a dark reflection of the “cloud computing” sweeping the commercial Internet, in which data is stored on the Internet rather than on a personal computer.

The question is, what's the programmers' game?

"Some researchers think Conficker is an empty shell, or that the authors of the program were scared away in the spring. Others argue that they are simply biding their time."

But of course the answer is not recondite. What's the safest way to realize value from such ingenious coding? Sell it. The Conficker programmers are perhaps now contacting judicious governmental and commercial buyers. OR perhaps they are themselves being contacted.

[One hesitates to make light of the situation, given that school and clinic computers in OECD and developing countries are likely to be massively affected if the virus is used destructively.)

Whipsawed by... Arne Duncan!--US Dept of Edu uses incentives to separate states from teachers unions

The US Dept of Education is supporting a somewhat conflicted array of funding programs for US schools. Two the highest-impact items are:

• Limiting award of "Race to the Top" funding to states that strongly support charter schools 
• Increasing teacher "accountability" by tying performance reviews (and pay increases) to students test scores 

The confluence of these initiatives, of course, is that they squeeze the teachers unions to be much more accommodating to the ideas and proposals of Dept of Edu Sect'y Arne Duncan.

Charter schools can operate with more freedom from regulation than public schools can. As a result, many have non-traditional aspects--they might offer special support to learning through technology, or through arts, public service, one-on-one instruction or any of a panoply of innovations.

(Some, like the network of Aspire Public Schools, focus on preparing disadvantaged and urban kids for national tests through the address of social, psychological and academic barriers.) 

Charter schools in many instances ask teachers to work longer hours and/or receive lower pay or benefits than public schools do. 

Race to the Top will make $4 billion available to states, but the 10 states that don't allow charter schools have been told that it's likely they'll get... nothing. In some instances, such as Washington state, charter-school initiatives have been beaten back repeatedly by teachers unions. In others, such as California (which allows Charters under some conditions) policymakers are already conferring on ways to ensure qualifying for funding. The Race to the Top funding restrictions will put teachers unions under a lot of pressure to back easing of regulations on charter schools. 

And at virtually the same moment, they're being "asked" to put aside long-standing positions regarding merit pay and specifically merit pay tied to student test performances. 

No one's asked me, and I don't have a particular ax to grind re charters, but...

First, teachers in the US are already underpaid, under-respected and under-professionalized (conditions that they share with colleagues in many other countries!). I would rather see funding to _increase_ their pay and professionalism over time (i.e., without skewing existing payscales), attract higher-quality candidates, retain them, and develop their skills over the span of their careers than I would funding to support "creative" schooling models that rely on squeezing more out of teachers while paying them less. 

Second, tying teachers' pay to student test scores risks--no, it WILL--warp teaching and learning completely. Test scores are already known to be poor gauges of competency and extremely poor predictors of later success; increasing their direct importance to teachers will further abstract learning in schools from effective, knowledge-building real-world behaviors. 

"Free" IT courseware for schools and libraries?

Courtesy of the Development Gateway people (zunia.org) comes information about ALISON Educating Together, a prob offers free IT training e-learning courseware suitable for use by libraries and schools. The courseware is intended to help adults (?) build basic computer-and-Internet skills. Also provided is a learner-management system, which one assumes interoperates with ALISON's own LMS to keep track of course completion and whatever else (learner contacts, for example?).  Best of all, it's free! 

Or "free." ALISON charges each participating institutions €100 to participate (no information as to whether that's per year or per course) and charges €20 for each official ALISON parchment certificate that it issues to learners when they complete the course. Host institutions (e.g., libraries, schools) get half of that fee. Unless learners opt for the free paper certificate. 

I'm unconvinced that many strapped-for-cash organizations are going to be in communities where €30 (for the course and the certificate, although schools and libraries can price the courses as they wish) for an unaccredited e-learning course on basic IT skills is going to be seen as a good investment. 

What other local organizations are offering training? (Face to face, anyone?) 

I'm also--as always--very skeptical about the ability of mass e-learning to address adult learners' needs to have context and utility bundled along with instruction. Learning in the abstract is both difficult and unrewarding. 

Ah well. 

Computer Science, unplugged?

The National Ctr for Women & Technology (NCWIT) has produced "Computer Science in a Box," a curriculum guide for teachers with students aged 9 to 14. CS in a Box  enables teachers to introduce concepts in computer science -- binary numbers, sorting networks, etc -- through activities that get students moving, interacting and thinking. And that don't involve using computers. 

One hoped-for outcome of this and other NCWIT measures is to increase the number of girl and women students who study science- and technology-related fields. 

The problem? The activities aren't effectively linked to their real-world contexts. And because there's no way for kids (or teachers) to connect the activities to anything, most kids (and teachers) are going to recall the activities, if they recall them at all, as pleasantly kinesthetic interludes between bouts of real learnin'. The science underpinning computers will be as mysterious as ever.

An example: The Binary Numbers teaching plan involves working with a standard set of five cards that demonstrate binary numbers (restricted to 1 and 0).  If a card is face-up, it's a 1, if it's face down, it's a zero. On the "1" side, each card has dots that demonstrate scaling by powers of 2 (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, although you'll note the order is reversed in the image below). 

 

In the whole-class activities, teachers and students explore making various numbers by arranging the cards to expose different values and interpreting these as binary representations. (Like for example, 15 is 0 1 1 1 1 [or 0 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 1] in our five-card or five bit system).

In the independent activities presented in a worksheet, appealingly, you're invited to use your five fingers as the integers in the scale to count--just using one hand--all the way to 31! Try it, it's way fun. (Even if your digital dexterity is a bit lame and you need to use your other hand to bend some of your fingers up or down in certain combinations.) Go ahead, try it, it only takes a minute. Here's a hint:

But, so? What's logarithmic scale to me or me to logarithmic scale that I should give a damn? THAT potentially fun bit of information, certainly the information needed to make all my finger-bending make sense, doesn't make an appearance in the NCWIT materials. And there's the problem: Imagine I'm a 9-year-old, I've put up with my teacher making me puzzle out the meaning of those cards, I've sat at my table or my desk bending my fingers and trying to count and occasionally getting corrected in public, and I understand that, yes, this bizarre system might actually be good for something. But what?

And with that, the experience fades. Later on someone at home asks, What did you do at school today, Little Lucinda?, and I reply, as usual, Nothing. When pressed, I admit that we did some counting, I might say we did some counting on our fingers, and if I'm assiduous in my efforts to forestall more questioning, I might even demonstrate. 

But understand? Forget it. 

What's missing, or among the several things that are missing, is the connection between "binary addressing" (1001 0101) and the way that I'm "naturally" or logically thrown into counting by powers of 2! (1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, which is counting by powers of 10, is transformed into 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and so on). And how do I get so thrown? As near as I can make out (and I'm obviously not a CS guy, or girl), once I limit myself to a given number of bits, say 8, my ability to represent numbers in binary is pretty limited: 

counting in binary to 9

0	0
1	1
2	10
3	11
4	100
5	101
6	110
7	111
8	1000
9	1001

In the table above, if we imagine using four fingers on one hand, we add new bits for the integers 1, 2, 4, and 8, and these also enable us to also represent 3, 5, 6, and 7. And then we're out of fingers.

But if I tie each of my integers to a "power of 2" number, and if I use all of the bits just as I did in my five-finger counting system, I'm suddenly representationally empowered: 

 

counting to 9 in a 5-bit binary system scaling by powers of 2

0	00000
1	00001
2	00010
3	00011
4	00100
5	00101
6	00110
7	00111
8	01000
9	01001

And see, I've got way more integers and combinations that I can use. 11111, for example, equals 31! 

NCWIT, however, just doesn't give me (whether I'm a teacher OR a student) the tools I need to understand why any of this means anything to anybody: 

One bit on its own can’t represent much, so they are usually grouped together in groups of eight, which can represent 

numbers from 0 to 255. A group of eight bits is called a byte.... Ultimately bits and bytes are all that a computer uses to store and transmit numbers, text, and all other information. 

Not enough. Not enough, by far, to get a teacher to invest classtime, energy and "teacher capital" in an activity that doesn't quite close its own circle.