It’s CS Education Week in Canada and the US. I find it amusing that the very day after complaining about how little most CS departments actually care about CS Ed, I stumble across this:
According to this site, which one would expect to be up to date (these are computer scientists after all, or so they say), the CS department at the UofC is doing some outreach . They say:
The mission of our Speaker’s Bureau is to engage our department in the high school computer science curricula development and to share our knowledge and exciting experience in computer science with high school students.
Sounds promising….
How may faculty are going out to the local high schools to give talks this week? 2 (yes folks, you read that right: TWO)
How may faculty are there in this department? approximately 40 (that’s FORTY)
OK. Well it is end of term and maybe those two are going to visit a lot of schools and really inspire kids to go into CS. Right?
How may schools are they going to? 2 (once again you heard right: TWO; one in the public system and one in the catholic system; one speaker is of course giving the SAME talk at both schools).
How many high schools are there in Calgary? About 20 in the public system, a dozen in the catholic system, PLUS several more in the surrounding districts AND numerous private schools. Let’s be charitable and say about 50.
50 schools, one week; two guys; two talks (OK three, but one is a rerun).
Well, that’s about what I expect from this department. Big talk. No action. So long as they can be seen to look like they’re doing something, they don’t actually have to do anything.
To quote one faculty member, “I don’t have to put up with this shit. I have tenure.”
I guess that means they shouldn’t have to do anything right?
On second thought, I’m grateful this department is so completely self-absorbed that it never notices anything but itself. It’s better that way. I’d rather high school students around here NOT see these people and hear what they think is cool. They’d totally get the wrong idea about where informatics is going.
