Congress declares National CS Education Week

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Go hug a professor

Melissa Norr at the outstanding CRA Policy Blog writes today about some Congressional action I can actually get behind

US Capitol DomeLast night, Congress passed a resolution stating that the week of December 7 is National Computer Science Education Week by a vote of 405 to 0. The resolution language includes reasons that computing is so important to our culture and economy and the need to increase the diversity of people in computing as important factors that a National Computer Science Education Week could help promote. The week of December 7 was chosen to honor Grace Murray Hopper, one of the earliest female pioneers in computing, as her birthday was December 9.

The full text of the resolution is here. Kudos to the ACM and their cast of cohorts for lobbying for this. Are there t-shirts?

Comments

  1. I don’t wish to sound ungrateful, but it’s easy to get Congress to give a name to something. Actions speak louder than words, though, so how about instead of merely ‘encouraging’ development via a decree, we put some more money into it, a la the America COMPETES act, but on steroids. Our economic dominance a few years back was based on technological innovation. Nearly all of our scientific endeavours rely on computational methods, in some form or another, for research these days. And our education system could use the metaphorical adrenaline-shot that a -real- announcement, with funds and a plan, would help create.

    I’m an optimist, but hey, Congress, we can do more.

    As an aside, you have “Education” spelled incorrectly in the blurb. 🙂

  2. Brian – happily, that spelling error goes to the CRA, not me. I’ve had more than my fair this week, and I’m glad to be able to duck that one…I fixed it, though. Kinda funny…a spelling error in an education-related post. At least I wasn’t reporting on National English Education Week. 🙂