Jim Lux wrote:
Most excellent... another good philosophical topic to discuss.
At 10:06 AM 1/27/2006, Robert G. Brown wrote:
On Thu, 26 Jan 2006, Brian D. Ropers-Huilman wrote:
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My first cut response, not the RGB 'bot response, which I'm sure will be
full of excellent anecdotes, is: absolutely.
:-)
Absolutely indeed.
My "excellent anecdotes" on this subject are basically derived from:
<snip>
From this, there is good news and bad news.
The good news is that bright kids DO like to build beowulves in high
school (including in schools in e.g. India, not just in the US!). In
nearly any school you'd have 5-15 students who would be perfectly happy
to immerse themselves in it and have a great time doing so with ANYTHING
like encouragement.
The bad news is that the ones who succeed generally do so without any
meaningful support from their school. Sometimes not even with access to
school-owned machines as a resource. Almost never with anything like
mentorship within the school itself. They scrounge machines themselves.
They find switches. They learn about linux (usually from me telling
them EXACTLY how to install a functional version for free on their
scrounged hardware). They find toy problems to play with. Then alas,
they graduate and move on, leaving very little that survives or might be
used to turn into a "program".
This is true of lots of things, not just HPC. It would be the same for
robotics, etc., or anything that is not in the "core objectives" for the
school, which by and large are:
"Graduate students" and "provide athletic events for community
entertainment"
The emphasis on Graduate students is presumably applicable for college
age students. And the emphasis on athletic events is nearly universal
(plus kids really do need the break, it seems).
However, given a school like this high school, there is a chance to break
the mold. But the teachers and administrators have a narrow view of
what is required education only based on their day-to-day focus. Clearly,
what's very instrumental in changing this is, especially at a school like
this, for industry experts to come in from the outside and say 'yes, you
will need these skills, yes, this is where the jobs and novel applications
are, yes, look up from your books and notice where the real
opportunities are.'
A basic truism is that if it's single (or small group) of student
originated, it will not survive the student leaving, particularly if
it's all the same grade level. But hey, the exact same thing is true at
the undergrad and graduate level, right? How many grad students create
a "program" that endures their departure? Sourceforge is FULL of such
things, some even dealing with HPC.
Well, what I would ideally like is to institutionalize HPC for this school.
That's really more core goal.
And so it will have life after my son's tenure here.
Why so bleak a picture?
Well, for one thing Windows overwhelmingly dominates as the OS installed
in most schools. It is so pernicious a phenomenon that they don't teach
"spreadsheets", they teach "using Excel". They don't qualify students
with an end of grade test on "word processing", they qualify students
with a test on "using Microsoft word". That this is Evil beyond all
measure is beyond any doubt -- imagine the screams if one had to take
all drivers tests in a state using a Ford. On the other hand, the
schools are crippled by the near-vacuum in computer competent teachers
in general -- it is doing as much as they can to end up with somebody
that can teach "using Word" or "using Excel" as part of "keyboarding".
There was an excellent article in "The American Scholar"
(http://www.pbk.org/pubs/amscholar.htm) a few years back about how
industry has hoodwinked the public school system (including at the
collegiate level) into providing free training for their software.
Do I take it (could not get article) that this implies free education
in particular commercial applications conditions students to respond
to these applications as the 'one true way' instead of being open
minded to other technical options?
But, to return to the point at hand.. generic skills are not in the
"core objective": graduating useful toilers for the community.
Note that few schools even have a local systems administrator. They
hire out all of the management of the school's networks to an outside
contractor, who locks down everything and is responsible for securing
everything and is MOST NEGATIVE about the thought of kids building a
supercomputer system "inside" the school's network where it could wreak
untold mischief. A point of view I'm not totally negative toward, by
the way.
And, in fact, given that schools, particularly public schools, are
lightning rods for any sort of controversy, they take a very, very
defensive attitude. No principal wants to be known as the one who "let
that child pornography ring use the school computer lab for servers".
They also don't have a heck of a lot of money to spend. (as in, zero,
zip, zilch).
In any case, for "advanced" students, there is typically not much money
available. The Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program in
California (restricted to the top 2% of students) has something like
$2/student/year available. More funding to support top students isn't
very politically attractive, even though it IS necessary.
Again, this may generally be the case, but if one has the fortune of being
at a great school, then it's time to build opportunities. So this is not
an average school, but it can be made better with a bit of participation by
interested parents.....
Even the relatively progressive schools that DO know what linux is, that
DO have a faculty person with some experience in linux (rarely
"professional grade" experience, unless the person involved is a true
saint, as anybody with pro grade experience can make 3-4x the salary of
a high school teacher without even trying hard),
Perhaps 3x-4x entry level, but someone with a some number of years of
experience as a teacher is making $50K/yr.
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/fd/cs/documents/j90summary0304.pdf
In fact, picking a couple local school districts near where I live and
work we have:
La Canada (way upscale, where JPL is) 38,520 start, 61,797 avg, 60,450
for BA+60 units (for 185 dys/yr)
Conjeo Valley (Thousand Oaks, high SES) 36,732 start, 58,419 avg, 59,764
BA+60
Entire state of CA: 35,135 lowest, 56,444 avg, 53,804 BA+60
Even districts with very low average family incomes don't have salaries
that are a lot lower. (The low income has other effects.. more is spent
on supplemental programs for remediation).
don't have the LEVEL of
experience in networking and supercomputing to be able to support a
beowulf program meaningfully. That's what the Wake Tech thing showed
me. Teachers from schools would need e.g. community colleges LIKE WTCC
with programs where they could teach the teachers, before there will
ever BE any teachers that can teach this as a course or part of a
meaningful high school experience with some continuity.
This is true in many areas. My mother (a retired
teacher,principal,assistant supt) is involved in a program to improve
math education at all levels, but especially elementary, and it's a lot
of work. We find this peculiarly ironic, since she was a sociology major
in school, and now probably has an Erdos number of 3, since she's been
working with a bunch of mathemeticians. Collective bargaining for
teachers has had a lot of unintended side effects, and one of them is
that it makes it hard to do things not directly tied to the curriculum
and core objectives. Union shop stewards and politically active members
(a small, but vocal percentage) take a dim view of workers doing more
hours than contractually obligated, especially if they are
uncompensated, which means that "enrichment" kinds of things (training
how to build beowulves, for instance) have to come out of paid time (in
some form), and there's precious little extra available.
The long term solution to the problem, perhaps, is to do what Doug and I
and many others have been working on for years -- create a sufficiently
robust and strong set of web based resources, including the PEOPLE (many
of whom are on this list) who are able and willing to act as mentors, as
teachers of teachers, as supporters of CC programs to formally train
teachers -- that one can bootstrap the process, where any bright student
CAN build a beowulf at a school, where a faculty person working with
them CAN learn about linux and supercomputing in the process, where
there IS a chance that a program can be born out of the experience.
But.. that just makes it less expensive overall, but doesn't address the
core problem, which is that you need to have an "enduring program" of
HPC (or robotics, or couture, or auto repair), and to do that, you need
to have MONEY on an enduring basis at the district level. Doesn't take
a lot of money, but it has to be there. Very, very few schools will do
away with a program that has any money associated with it, even for what
seems to be de-minimis amounts, especially if it has a multi-year
commitment. That money could pay for a few hundred dollars as a stipend
for a teacher (who would then be compensated, however trivially, for
their extra work, getting out from the union problem).
So, get that endowment fund going.
I keep hoping that we see more of this, but I also recognize that the
obstacles are still pretty significant. Ultimately it may be the
parents, or changing the way the Government recognizes "standards", that
drives a movement to linux in schools and the consequently greater
degree of learning about systems that would enable. I see that
happening in Europe and Asia, but not (alas) so much here...
Jim Lux
hv
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