The Script for the talk at ICISTS-KAIST 2013

Giving a presentation about computer science education in South Korea, 2013

     I would like to share my script for the talk that I gave at ICISTS-KAIST on this blog, so that others can have a chance to read and understand some tiny point that I want to get across our current situation on computer science education. You can also listen to me talking for 13 minutes on Youtube. Also, I also wrote more details about the conference as a whole in the other page that I encourage you to see if you are interested in the conference.

Here is the script:

Topic A Push for more Computer Science Education  

Good afternoon and thank you for such a great opportunity of being here. One of the main theme at this conference is ‘the essential of a communication between technology science and the public’. Computer Science Education is one great example of how the communication between technology science and the public failed and had a huge impact on us. 

Let me begin my talk with these three famous people. If you don’t know these people, I believe you know their companies really well. Start with Bill Gate, a founder, chairman and a CEO of Microsoft who marked the beginning of the PC (personal computer) era. Then, Steve Jobs, a co-founder, chairman and a CEO of Apple who built the iphone, the first smartphone that altered our life completely. And lastly, Mark Zuckerberg, a founder, a chairman and a CEO of facebook, which has a vision that everyone should always stay connected. And if you know their biography a little bit, you will also know that not only did they found a successful company that change a world, they also dropped out of college, all of them. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out from Harvard and Steve Job dropped out from Reed College. Wait, I’m not saying we all should drop out of college and create a company that will change the world right now.  

Because of this myth and stories of these people, we start to believe that “If you have this innate talent and you’re drawn to it, you’ll learn it on your own and you don’t really need it at school.” But this idea is just wrong because we always forget to take into account that these people have resources to learn computer when they are young, and their parents support them to do what they want to do. Not every kid has those opportunities. 

And the only way that we can give a chance to all kids, not only the ones that have many opportunities, is through education, and specifically ‘computer science education.’  

There are 3 main problems that prevent computer science education to become successful. First of all, it is ‘computers and the internet.’ I read an article from a person in a tech company, and he gave an interesting metaphor about computers and the internet that “having computers is like having a car that can take you wherever you want to go and having the internet is just like having electricity that people have to have it everywhere all the time.” 

But the truth is not all schools have computers or the internet. I do not mean that schools have to have a supercomputer that can do anything instantly, but school should provide laptops that students can work with. If schools do not have internet, how do you expect our students to learn since everything is online? This will immediately close their opportunity to work in computing jobs since they do not have any experience with computers before, and it will be too late if they will start it in college.  

One example of how to solve this problem comes from one of our keynote speakers at the conference, Walter Bender. He served as a president of ‘One laptop per Child’ projects with a goal to provide each and everyone a low power low cost connected laptop. 

I have a story to explain this point to you. Just this past year, I was a technology assistant in my dorm, and my job was to help other students with their computer problems. One time, I had a girl who came to see me (that didn’t happen often) because the software that she just installed was not working. I was a little confused that why it did not work since you just simply click ‘install.’ So, I uninstalled and installed it again to see whether it showed any problem, and before the end it said ‘Please restart immediately so that the software can work properly.’ I turned to her and asked whether she did that, and she said ‘No, what am I supposed to do?’ If someone does not know how to install software properly, how can we expect them to get computing jobs?

Second problem with computer science education is ‘Teachers’. We all have an idea of what teachers will be like in school. But do any of you imagine that a computer programmer like this one is a teacher in high school? do you? Not only it’s hard to imagine that some programmers will become a teacher, but another reason is money. Since there are not enough people to become computer programmers, the salary of these types of jobs are higher than normal, making it unthinkable for someone who works in a tech companies to become a teacher for computer science. The lack of teachers who truly like computer science makes it more difficult for students to like the subject because they cannot see why this subject is interesting. 

Lastly, but the most importantly. The main problem for computer science education is ‘education’ itself. Most schools, at least in the US and in Thailand, only offer computer science as an elective subjects just like art and music. We do not teach students computer science everyday just like we teach them mathematics everyday even though some could argue that computer skills are more important than math literacy. And when they do, they only teach them how to use Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. It seems to me that educational policy makers simply don’t understand the difference between teaching kids to use technology and teaching them how to create it.  

The reason behind this is that a general idea of ‘Education’ is simply wrong. The concept of ‘Public Education’ that we have today started in the 19th century to support the industrialism, so that people will have more abilities to work in that era. We are now more than hundred years later, but the value of education is still the same as it was a hundred years ago. We still only focus on academic ability for each student: how fast he or she can calculate mathematics or how good he or she is to remember each part of a cell. But we forget to teach them skills that they need to survive in a current work condition, and one of them is a computer skill. 

I admitted that education in general is a really difficult concept since it supposes to teach our children to be able to work ten years from now. But in fact we have no clue what the world is going to be like in five years. Some might not even be sure that the world will exist five years from now. But what we can do is to equip our children with a skill that is certainly useful now, so that at least they will be able to pick up new skills faster once they need to.  

One possible answer for this problem is more communication between tech companies and the society. What we have to do this case is to listen to these tech companies, not just only buy their products, and figure out of skills that our students need to have in order to work with them. So that we can teach our children to have that skills. It might sounds like an easy task to do to fix this problem. In fact, it requires us to rethink our core value of “public education”, what we want from the system and how we are going to get it. 

I would like to end the talk with one more story about a small country in the Middle East, “Israel”. Israel is a tiny country in the Middle East that does not have much oil supply like other countries in the same region. But it used technology and computer science education to turn the country upside down with one of the best computer science education programs in the world. As a result, even though they have only 7.76 million population, it has the 2nd most number of startups in the world, just behind the United States, and of course, it has the most number of startups per capita.  

One example of a successful startup that comes from Israel is ‘Waze’. Waze is a mobile app that is recognized to be a real competition of a Google Map with its social network component. 

Earlier this year three big companies: Facebook, Google and Apple tried to buy Waze. And the winner is Google with its acquisition of 1.03 billion dollars, just for a small startup company. But this is not the end of the story, the acquisition still allows ‘Waze’ to operate in Israel with the same team and the same facility. This is a good news for Israel because Waze will continually have a positive impact on its country and will inspire thousands or millions to take this opportunity to make their own startup as well. 

Finally, these three are the legend that has changed the world and the next one might be sitting in this room right now. But we will never see the next Steve Jobs if we still have this type of computer science education program with little support. We have to accept that our computer science education, in fact our education, today is broken and we need to fix it if we want more companies and technology that will transform this world into a better place. 

Thank you.

     If you read through the whole thing and have some thoughts or comments about the topic, please don't hesitate to shoot me an email or give comments. I will appreciate it very much.