One of the reasons I ran for City Council, and one of the reasons I’m running for Lt. Governor, is because I saw how the new economy wasn’t benefiting everyone equally. The team at Bostinno — a news website covering Boston’s startup scene — asked me to write an op-ed on some of those thoughts.
I wanted to make sure the community here saw it, too. I cross-posted it below the jump.
According to a report recently released by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, “The state’s tech sector is growing fast, but a shortage of qualified workers is preventing Massachusetts from becoming the capital of the nation’s innovation economy.”
Our education system and workforce training programs haven’t kept up with the fast pace of our new economy, and if we don’t take great strides to catch up we’ll lose our place as a national and global competitor in the tech sector.
As part of my work as a board member of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, one of our state’s economic development agencies, I’ve criss-crossed the Commonwealth as we’ve worked to lay fiber and expand digital access to Western Mass and The Cape.
The key to our success as a tech mecca hinges on our ability to expand our innovation economy beyond Boston and Cambridge, and past I-95. We need to pop the bubble. Massachusetts has no shortage of talent and by closing the opportunity gap we expand the economy for families across the Commonwealth.
The question: How?
A crucial component of expanding our innovation economy is, as an earlier Boston Globe feature suggests, making strategic investments in the right educational and vocational training programs that will make it possible for everyone in Massachusetts to share in the benefits of the new economy. We must ensure that every child has a head start on achieving their full potential by investing in universal pre-k and j-k programs. We must empower our students to become familiar and engaged with STEM fields by strengthening STEM education both in the classroom and during after school programs. We must continue investing in community colleges and workforce development programs to ensure that everyone who receives a publicly funded education is learning state-of-the-art skills that make them an asset not only in the economy we we have now, but the economy we will build for the future.
Most importantly, we need to connect our fledgling industries with the skilled workers that will allow their business to grow and thrive by serving as a bridge to connect communities with stakeholders. With the right investments in education and infrastructure, there can be a place for everyone in the economy of the future, whether they have a four-year degree or a two-year certificate.
As a former venture capitalist, an entrepreneur and an elected official, I’ve spent my career working to bridge this gap. I know that we can build beyond the Boston bubble by incentivizing the growth of the innovation economy and instituting targeted economic development incentives that will entice startups and tech companies to grow in new places.
I’ve used this tactic on the City Council by incentivizing the creation of low-cost startup incubator space in all new development in Kendall Square to ensure that new businesses won’t be priced out of the square and forced to take their business outside of the Commonwealth. I’m working to spread Internet access to kids in public housing and fostering an environment where entrepreneurs, non-profits and the residents they serve have common ground to interact to solve shared challenges within their community.
These types of targeted economic development incentives won’t only spark growth in the Gateway Cities – they’ll also allow our new companies and industries to succeed as they benefit from the untapped talent pool that exists across Massachusetts.
The key to the growth of our state’s tech economy lies in working together as a Commonwealth and linking together instead of sequestering our startups in certain cities. A few years ago, when a large company pondered making a move from Cambridge to Boston, officials from both cities fought tooth and nail to attract the company. When we compete with our neighbors, we lessen our ability to remain a viable competitor with other tech clusters across the country and around the world. In an effort to enhance regional collaboration, I partnered with Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson and former Boston City Councilor Mike Ross to hold historic joint hearings of Boston and Cambridge about talent retention and economic clusters. I know that if we expand these collaborative efforts statewide, our tech sector and our citizens will be stronger than ever before.
To be clear, these goals will only come to fruition if we invest in the basic infrastructure that will tie us all together – roads and rail, bridges and broadband – and the educational infrastructure that will allow our next generation to thrive.
For a long time, I would tell people about my bafflement that public schools don’t teach every single child about basic personal finance. Checking and savings accounts, bank accounts vs. investment funds, credit and debit cards, car loans and student loans, mortgages, payday loans, all of that. Financial illiteracy is rampant, causes huge system problems in our economy and society, and yet we leave these basics that every single person needs to know about entirely to learning outside of school. How does that make any sense?
I’ve heard that in the past decade personal finance has become a part of the curriculum in some public schools, though usually as an elective in the upper grades, and without very much time devoted to it. It should be treated as a core part of public school education on the same level as English, math, and civics / social studies.
As we’re taking baby steps towards filling that ridiculous gaping hole in our education system, another one is opening up: Programming.
Already now, but certainly in the future, having a comfort with the idea that you can write a computer script or simple program is the thing that divides people between those who have real access to how our world works and those who are forced to sit back as users of what’s provided for them. Most people, especially people who grew up in the world we had until about a decade ago, don’t seem to understand this. People think of programming as a niche skill, something for a few professions. Once, it was. Before too long, it’ll be as essential as being able to read and write. Programming is becoming the basic literacy of the future world, and we’re raising an illiterate society.
How soon will it be before we can make sure that not a single child graduates from a Massachusetts Middle School or High School without having written a simple mobile app or web app? Any more than we’d let someone graduate without having written a simple essay.
Heck, I was taught programming in high school — in an experimental course, granted, but that was back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and we learned on dumb terminals connected to time-share (mainframe computer, not vacation rental). It is simply inexcusable that every student in America is not required to learn some basic coding skills.
Build a simple app? I’d be satisfied if they learned how to do simple scripting to automate some basic tasks.
Sure, whatever language they learn now will likely not be the language they need to know 10 or 20 years from now. I’m not using the BASIC I learned in high school or the Pascal I learned in college. But what’s important is learning how to think like a programmer — and learning how to learn technical skills.
The QWERTY keyboard will not go away anytime soon for serious (paid) work.
I’ve been a professional software developer since 1982. I have a degree in EE and worked as an engineer (for Digital) eight years before that.
Of ALL the technical courses I took, my 10th grade vocational-ed typing class is far and away the most valuable single course of all my schooling. I’ve used it literally every day for forty years … and every HOUR of every working day for over thirty of those years.
Attempting to perform any professional information-processing work (and that’s pretty much ALL of the “Innovation Economy”) without touch-typing is like attempting to work as a professional musician without reading music — only a few can succeed, and it is a serious career impediment for all.
Unfortunately my left hand can’t handle typing, though I can still do much better than hunt and peck with my right.
You’re absolutely right about teaching basic financial management skills to kids starting in grade school. To make it happen in public schools, we’ll need to add more hours to the school day or, at minimum, the school week.
….we could throw out some junk taking up time. Much of high school math is taken up with faux “math vocabulary” that isn’t really used outside of ersatz Common Core lessons. And what about fractions? Do you know that the United States teaches fractions far beyond other industrialized nations? Soon enough, one is basically using decimals. I’m no math teacher, but that’s a large amount of students’ time we’re wasting American students already spend hours in school year than students from any other OECD country. I’m not ready to go out and completely end childhood yes.
What I have seen taught and taught myself all seems worthwhile, and that includes fractions.
A quote from an engineer on his child’s seventh grade math textbook:
The whole article is here. Basically, the conceit (that I’ve heard elsewhere) is that vocabulary terms are being invented for the sake of pretending that STEM can cover literacy. It doesn’t.
As for the fraction issue, well, I personally use halves and quarters for baking and mileage. Beyond that, any math (gas prices, sports records) is done with decimals. Why teach two system that do the same thing if you’re only going to end up using one regularly? Perhaps the US is smarter than everyone else in doing so, but I doubt it. Some of the “new” techniques used in middle school math I first saw being used by a Uruguayan exchange student about eight years ago.
I substitute teach at the elementary level so that’s what I’m exposed to more regularly and haven’t seen high school math in almost 20 years (ouch!).
I’d like to know why the metric system is taught almost exclusively. It’s good to know how to convert, but math lessons I’ve seen try to pretend the English system doesn’t exist. The US has tried for more than a century to adopt metric as our official system and it hasn’t worked yet.
And I blame the MCAS for it. Literature to me is essential to puttingn vocabulary in an everyday context rather than forcing bus to take vocab tests in science classes. CPS seemed to be pushing this too when I tutored there ( under Daley sure it’s worse under Rahm).
Thank you Councilor Cheung for posting here. It’s nice to hear from municipal leaders.
As someone who works in the tech industry, I would still encourage us to think broader. Boston certainly has a booming tech industry and we are moving toward those types of things as a driver of growth (although being in a tech bubble is absolutely a very real possibility right now). I think we should encourage innovation and entrepreneurship generally, and not just focus on tech.
There has been an obsession with the tech industry in Boston, but we can be more than that.
Taza Chocolate, for example, employs many people, and adds so much to the community (and also makes very tasty products). They are absolutely not a tech company, though. Why should a company like that not be encouraged as much as the next failed WhatsApp knockoff? The “New” Economy doesn’t have to be just about mobile apps and cloud computing. We should be encouraging a broader set of businesses and training people for all of these jobs.
That’s why, despite thinking that programming should be required in education, we should also be focusing on STEAM education (A for Arts) so that we raise children who are well-rounded and can work in and create the businesses that will be the foundation of the economy in the future. I think that goes well beyond our current focus on tech.
Councilor Cheung, since you posted, I also hoped to get an answer on a question for which I haven’t seen a full explanation.
Many of us here at BMG are looking for a progressive leader for statewide office. I certainly am. Some actions in your career have made me wonder about that.
Could you please explain what changed in your political philosophy that caused you to switch from running as a Republican for State Assembly in Virginia in 2005 to running for Cambridge City Councilor and now running as a Democrat for Lt. Gov of MA?
Thanks for your comment. While technology is a vibrant sector, you’re absolutely right that entrepreneurism means more than just web startups. Taza chocolate is a great example of that, as are any number of other companies in Somerville — Slumbrew Brewing comes to mind. That’s why I will be the partner with local cities and towns to figure out how to unlock the potential of that entrepreneurial spirit — whether that’s tech, the arts, or something else entirely. STEAM education is absolutely a big part of that.
As to your other question. It’s true I once ran for office as a Republican. It’s also true that I have one of the most Progressive records on the Cambridge City Council. My father emigrated from China to Cambridge in 1969 in search of the American dream. With his newfound power of the vote, he was in search of whatever platform seemed the farthest away from way of life that he had just worked so hard to abandon. In the 70s, that meant enrolling as a Republican.
Like many Asian-American families, I was raised Republican, but my parents also raised me to value the importance of participating in community. Frankly, while I had been involved in my community, I hadn’t paid much attention to politics. As I became more involved in civic life in my neighborhood, I was approached to run for office by the Republican Party and I thought this was an opportunity to get involved.
Some money started coming in from party donors and I was sent to an intense campaign training. In the training, strategists told me what to say about the hot button issues of the time – abortion, the war in Iraq, gun control, and affirmative action – and I quickly realized that I didn’t agree with any of it. I stopped campaigning, but it was too late to get off the ballot. A glorious end to my relationship with the Republican Party.
It’s embarrassing, and I knew I had to get serious about the issues. As I began to pursue my Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, I delved into the issues and decide for myself what I really believed. I’m not a Democrat because I was raised a Democrat or had Democratic friends in college. I’m a Democrat because I’ve thought long and hard about our policy choices and identified with the values that we seek to promote.
For those who question whether or not someone with my ‘questionable Republican past’ has the qualifications to serve as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, I urge you to make your decision after you look at my record as one of the most progressive Cambridge City Councillors. If you speak to a Cambridge resident, they might explain how over my last three terms on the City Council I’ve fought to maintain Cambridge’s long history of promoting justice and equality by supporting measures to expand the rights of women, immigrants, and the LGBT community. If you bring it up to a union member, they will probably laugh and say that they didn’t realize I was a Republican when I stood shoulder to shoulder with working men and women as they negotiated labor contracts with MIT and how I marched with clerical workers at Harvard to urge the university to provide comprehensive healthcare benefits and competitive wages. If you talk to a teacher, they might tell you that’s a shock because they have never heard a republican refuse to approve a budget unless it includes more funding to cover universal access to early education.
By my record, by my values, and by my beliefs, I’m a progressive through-and-through. I urge you to look at both before making up your mind, and think about a progressive champion I admire who was a registered Republican into her 40s: Senator Elizabeth Warren.
STEM has its place. These are skills for the future. And that’s fine a far as it goes, even though much of that is work that is easiest to offshore, or replace with computers. What the STEM mantra has created, though, is an acceptance of weakening the backbones of American innovation — creation, risk-taking, innovation. It comes from working with ideas, not walking the path someone has already set out. Facebook wasn’t just programming. It hit because it was an understanding of how people interact, what they want, and how to give it to them. Not just coding.
What category of exports offers the greatest profit and trade imbalance to the US? Culture. The creation of music, films, television. The arts, and story-telling. The arts have been dessicated in the pursuit of STEM test scores. Citizenship as well as social studies are cut to make room for more math review in our schools. The best stories — true ones of our history.
Do you have any plan to defend the teaching of the arts and citizenship to go along with promoting STEM, councilor? I’d be very excited to hear about it.
Every “technical” challenge has a social and interpersonal context and has social and interpersonal implications. Every “social and interpersonal” challenge has a technical context and has technical implications. This is true at every level of abstraction.
At a high abstraction level, adopting a paradigm-shift in technology (such replacing in-house IT with cloud-based alternatives) turns the world upside-down for every team member who has been involved with the soon-to-be-replaced technology. For a high-tech startup, that’s just about everybody — and whatever the company culture was before the change, it gets turned upside down along with the people.
At a microscopic level, a stupid and simple detail like who has “admin” or “root” privileges on the machines used by each scientist in a biopharm company has surprising implications. When a talented, motivated, and creative PhD is told that they CAN’T WORK until “IT” gets around to installing the hot new tool that’s going around, that PhD will do what talented, motivated, and creative PhDs do … they’ll tunnel to their own system, they’ll find a way to crack the security, they’ll jump through a web portal and put ALL the companies corporate jewels in some open-source university db someplace — or they’ll find somewhere else to work.
The result is rich and complex taffy-like layering of technical and social aspects.
Teaching, or understanding, only STEM leaves the student unprepared for solving the whole problem — literally ignorant. Everybody who’s been through a startup knows that the first step is to appreciate the importance of solving the whole problem.
Yes, STEM is important. I have a BSEE from a prestigious college — and I realized early on (fortunately) that I was WOEFULLY unprepared for real life, especially in comparison to my European colleagues.
I read NO foreign language (never mind speak). I had not read ANY of the “Great Books” of western civilization until I did so on my own — Homer, Aristotle, Plato, Virgil, Hegel, Kant, Hume, etc. I had no concept of the organizational dynamics that govern groups and technical teams. I had not read any of the modern works that shape and reflect who we are.
I would have been a far more effective leader and executive in the “Innovation Economy” (not so long ago, we called it “High Tech”) had I traded my third-year college course in “Advanced dynamics of linear differential equations with constant coefficients” for a year of reading and understanding Dostoevsky, Kafka, and even Joseph Heller.
There is more to be learned about what to do and what to avoid from “Catch-22” than from ANY “STEM” curriculum.