Finding a Place for Cyber Education
“One would expect then that technological education would be a familiar subject in American Schools. But it is not.”
Neil Postman — “The End of Education”
Should educators attempt to find a place in cyber education, or should educators make a unique place for cyber education? Finding a place means that we take note of the present education infrastructure and construct our pedagogy to fit the existing system. If we build our own place, that means we will have to come up with innovative ways to deliver curriculum and imbed that new idea into the system with little regard for disrupting the existing framework.
Changing a system does not mean things will fall into place easily. Mistakes will be made. It is inevitable. Cybersecurity education is a new area of knowledge that was almost non-existent at the turn of this century. Our present system has done a poor job of churning out skilled cybersecurity professionals and are falling behind the tremendous and growing demand for cybersecurity professionals.
We have a binary choice: deliverer cybersecurity curriculum in the same failed system that now exists, or come up with new ways to deliver the curriculum that depends less on the present public school system infrastructure. This could be a new system that depends on partnerships with public, private, and governmental organizations. Some of these alliances will work, and most of them will not. But the point is that something new has to be tried.
Many people talk about disrupting the system. I’m not too fond of the word disrupter. It is an overly used word, and I wish some of these techies stop using it at symposiums and TED Talks. Used in its present context is sounds a little smug and a bit arrogant and seems to focus more on personalities (read salespeople) than the actual technology that is promised to change the world. If an idea is excellent, it will be a disrupter of some sort anyway. The end result/product can speak for itself.
Thinking about being a disruptor in the cyber education field is not something I ever need to be concerned about. I want to help train our population to become a cybersecurity literate society. Becoming a cyber literate society means providing curriculum and training to as many people as possible, whether this is in K-12, college, or adult education. There is not just a single way to reach this goal, there are many ideas that can work, and the critical thing to do is start an action that will help us achieve that goal. We have to try diverse methods to reach our goals. Just as in nature, entropic defects are likely to occur when there are no differences introduced to a structure. This is true of language, art, and education.
It is just as important to know what not to do as knowing what to do. There are many educational organizations making headway into the cybersecurity industry. Numbers can prove that. We can all learn from the methods that work and do not work. There is no shortage of programs and organizations that give free training and curriculum for cybersecurity. The quality of some of these programs varies wildly. But yet, we still have a shortage of cybersecurity professionals. So, making something free does not mean the resource will be used properly. More high schools and colleges are offering classes and degrees in cybersecurity. So far, none of those efforts are putting a dent in the cybersecurity workforce gap!
So, finding a place in cyber education is not a great goal. It is not enough to solve the problem, and the data proves that point. That is why when it comes to talking about the issue of a skills gap between what jobs are available and the low number of people in the talent pool is the tired central theme of most of the cyber seminars I attend and the books I read. New places and spaces have to be made.
We have to start as early as possible. This means pre-school. Pre-school is the age most people start using computers. Ethics and safety have to be the first lessons. This is not just a onetime deal. Cybersecurity teaching has to be enforced and embedded over and over for their entire school career until is it actually a part of the culture. There has to be a pool of common knowledge that links us all together in the cybersecurity field. In his best selling book, “Cultural Literacy: What every American Needs to Know,” E.D. Hirsch states that if acquiring cultural literacy is lost during the early grades, then it is lost forever. I will not take it that far because I believe all humans can be lifelong learners. However, introducing our students to cyber literacy and technology literacy, in general, will help us reach a cyber literacy utopia. Or at least it will get us closer to where we should be.
Additionally, corporations have to be involved. The same companies that are complaining about a shortage of talent will have to help to train the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. Many corporations are already providing resources for educational institutions. But more needs to be done, much more. As our future becomes more specialized and technical, the harder and more complicated it will become for non-specialist and non-technical people to participate in the decisions that affect their lives.
In my dreams, I see laws and policies being made that mandates a structured cybersecurity program for K-12 educations, and cybersecurity will be embedded in all course subjects naturally. I dream about cybersecurity teachers being trained and paid by the very corporations that benefit the most from cyber talent. I dream about cybersecurity becoming a common core course instead of an elective. I dream of a time when certifications become just as common and practical as high school diplomas. And last, I dream of a cyber literate American society that involves all people, and their knowledge of cybersecurity. Cybersecurity’s mother, digital technology, will enable us to have informed public discourse about how this technology is affecting our American future. It will be only through an educated public that we will be able to meet the challenges ahead of us.
