During our group discussions on Monday, TJ raised points about the actual effectiveness of making initiatives teaching coding, in that even if it is promoted, there is still likely to be a disparity in outcomes by race. There are schools in black and Latinx communities that don’t even having working computers; these groups already begin with a disadvantage in access to technology in schools and digital literacy, and even if funding is given for coding education, that doesn’t mean that it will bridge the gap. This made me realize that, while Obama’s initiative seeks to create equal opportunity, much more has to be done for it to be reality.
There was also a point raised about differences between “coding” and “programming;” more specifically, the relative benefits of teaching how to work with a certain language and developing that way verses teaching students the underlying principles with problem solving. The latter would make it such that students would be able to adapt to changes even further, while the former might prepare for a job that might one day evolve past their capabilities or become obsolete.
Connecting these two threads to American history, specifically the space race of the 1960’s when the US government poured large sums of money into higher education to promote aerospace engineering, it seems the US has a history of creating large scale programs designed to promote the economy of the future while failing to address underlying systemic problems. There are students who already have the skills, and more important, resources necessary to become effective coders and programmers; these are the people who benefit from these programs. The students who they are probably intended for, meanwhile, have began with a late start. For computer science initiatives such as Obama’s to benefit the one’s who need opportunity the most, then it seems that more attention needs to be paid to underlying issues that have prevented development in the first place.
Your connection of our discussion of the space race, also happening around the time when more people were needed in companies to code, brings this conversation to a broader level than just computer programming/coding. Through reading this aspect of your post, I was reminded of an alumni speaker who came to my “Leading Innovation and Entrepreneurship” course I took last semester, Amelia Lobo. She came to speak about microfinancing in the United States. When I spoke with Amelia after class for coffee, she spoke more on her experiences in general working for banks. It became clear to me how passionate she is about access to banking resources and information for people, specifically in the age of technology. Online banking has exploded over the last few years, and while it can be a lot easier for some than going to a physical bank, it makes the process more difficult for many as well. There is the assumption by a lot of companies now that everyone has the technological and monetary means to access online banking and information, which is not true. This idea is very similar to the expectation that most people will be able to learn to code through even free online organizations, even though technology access in itself is not universal across the United States (schools being an example discussed in class). Furthermore, she touched on the use of property as collateral for loans, and how the fact that African Americans in the US could not own property until the later 1800s has put many at an immediate disadvantage, as loans and money, in general, are very cumulative.