Social discussion of CS in K-12

[Mike Royse <royse.innovations AT gmail.com>]

This is a very important discussion. For my contribution, and this is a bit simplistic, but the lack of trust between people in different stations is in the way of collaboration between those same people. The poor don't trust the rich. The rich don't trust the poor. The social scientists don't trust the business people, and the other way around. Certainly the divide(s) between ethnic groups have fit this pattern. When anyone tries do do something about any of these things, they run into the problem that they have not built enough trust to hold things together long enough to let a new pattern form. I see it all the time, some national level innovative idea breeds a local response which is met with skepticism. And rightly so, as usually the past experience of the skeptics shows that human thoughtlessness pervades. I could go on but I will not.

The answer I am holding onto today is simple. Walk together. I mean, whoever it is you are trying to help, walk with them enough to get to know them. Whoever it is that would like to invest money to rid the world of some problem, same answer, walk with them until you know them. Whatever our fear about someone's motivation, the fact is we could be right, but after walking together, we change, we become changed by our understanding of one another, and our motivations start to flow from that understanding.

The world of ideas out there is unthinkably large.In terms of the community we are trying to improve, i think we should work on any and all opportunities to build trust and familiarity among it's own people and including ourselves. If we do this, it might not matter who we take money from.

On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Reese, George Clifford <reese AT illinois.edu> wrote:

Hi Martin,

 

Just read this. I think I see where you are going. In these times of apparent scarcity it’s hard not say, “please give us money” and “THANK YOU” whenever some dollars come through, that we tend to abandon critique of the sources of the dollars.

 

I very much like the idea of moving a library away from the hidden agenda of quiet obedience. But we must move carefully there. Overthrowing structures often leads to some unintended consequences. We are respondents to rfps and recipients of generosity, but we also have our agendas. So do local entrepreneurs. So do teachers, parents, and kids. To me it’s a question of keeping the communication going, and trying to be as transparent as possible in the process.

Thank you Martin. This is hard for me to think about, but very important.  

 

George

 

 

From: ctrl-shift-bounces+reese=illinois.edu AT lists.mste.illinois.edu [mailto:ctrl-shift-bounces+reese=illinois.edu AT lists.mste.illinois.edu] On Behalf Of Wolske, Martin B
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2014 10:57 AM
To: Jessica Pitcher
Cc: ctrl-shift AT lists.mste.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: [Ctrl-Shift] article

 

I’m sorry I missed the discussion. George and Kerris filled me in a bit — sounds like it was quite interesting.

 

I read the article with interest, but also a bit of growing unease. It took me a bit to process why. Philanthropists indeed have been foundational in many big initiatives over our history. Many public libraries have computer labs because of a Gates initiative. Or going further back, many libraries started only because of funding from Carnegie. But while Carnegie libraries were relatively easy to acquire within white communities, there were significant hurdles within black communities, and so very few were started there. This would certainly jibe with the gist of the article.

 

I think the thing that bothered me, though, is the one I have with the idea of the philanthropist at all. In some cases - say for instance Carnegie - the wealth that was later distributed was first made through rather harsh human rights and environmental violations. And I’ve heard it argued that the value to Carnegie of the Carnegie libraries was to reframe the whole library institution as a place of quite consumption of knowledge from the learned (and well behaved) rather than as a place for community building and knowledge exchange that might further worker unrest. Today we struggle to overcome that vision of the library as the quite repository of books that remains that legacy.

 

Or consider Gates’ contribution, which framed the role of the public computer lab as a place for those who didn’t have access to develop the needed entry level skills to fill primarily low pay and dead end jobs. Prairienet served as a circuit rider for the Gates foundation grants so we saw the material they provided and did what we could to add additional curriculum. 

 

Too often philanthropists use their wealth to do things that look good, but are built upon hidden agendas or problematic foundational philosophies. Is that the nature of the beast? Or is there a way to foster better philanthropists? OR, should the goal be to break out of the consumptive framework all together, in which we wait for the altruistic philanthropist to save us, and instead champion an approach of technology and literacy for the community that helps the community address the problems directly. Including through the help not of multi-millionaires business people, but the local social entrepreneur?

 

— Martin

 

On Sep 4, 2014, at 8:11 AM, Jessica Pitcher <pitcheje AT champaignschools.org> wrote:

Thought I would pass this along after our discussion from Tuesday…

 

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140829040920-23074630-if-bill-gates-were-black

 

Jessica

 

Jessica Pitcher

Assistant Principal

Kenwood Elementary School

1605 West Kirby Avenue

Champaign, IL 61821

(217) 351-3815

 

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Mike Royse

Community Innovations Consultant

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