What Do Bill Gates, Grace Hopper, and Alan Turing Have in Common?

Pretty much everyone knows about Bill Gates.  He is probably more thought of as a very rich man and the co-founder of Microsoft.  But he started as a geek programmer and, along with the role of Chief Executive Officer, he was also Microsoft's chief software architect.  Given the reach of Microsoft Windows, he certainly has had a significant impact of computer programming.

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (USN), was a naval officer and the grandmother, if you will, of machine-independent programming languages, and history credits her as the creator of COBOL, one of the first modern programming languages.  She is also the person who popularized the term "debugging" for fixing software problems.  In recognition of her brilliance in programming, there is actually a US Navy destroyer named for her.

Alan Turing was the man who broke the code - specifically, the ciphers used by the Nazis during World War II.  He also invented the "Turing machine", a  theoretical device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules.  From this it is clear that Turing's designs and theorems led to the creation of modern -day computers.

So, those three persons each left a huge mark in our short, but rapidly exapnding, history of computer science.  Each should be lauded for their brilliance and their stories told in our schools, especially with so many schools placing an emphasis on mathematics and science.

But only Alan Turing counts.  At least in California.

Because what they don't have in common is this:  Bill Gates has been happily married to his wife, Melinda, and they have two children.  Grace Hopper's husband died in 1945 and she never remarried since then.  Alan Turing was gay.

That last characteristic earns Turing a spot in California's curriculum.

SB 48 has now passed both houses in Sacramento and is waiting for action by Governor Jerry Brown.  This bill - also known as the FAIR Education Act - "would amend the Education Code to include social sciences instruction on the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people."  Brown has to actively veto it; if he simply ignores it, it is passed into law by default.

What passage of this bill would entail is that textbooks, lessons plans, school curricula be changed so as to include teaching the children of the state the contributions that  lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have made to society.  It is not enough to teach the children that Alan Turing was a smart man and helped to defend Great Britain against the Nazis durng the last world war - they must also know that he was a homosexual.

Why?

The fact that he was gay is irrelevant to understanding the concepts of a Turing machine.  The fact that he was gay played no role in breaking German ciphers.  The fact that he was gay does nothing to elevate his contributions to the world above those of Bill Gates and Grace Hopper. 

In short, the FAIR Education Act does nothing to further the education of children in California.  Instead, its objective remains solely one of pushing the agenda of a special interest group, whose state population is located not throughout the state but largely between two cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco.  And at the expense of the tax payers . . . regardless of their sexual orientation.

Yeah, that's "FAIR" . . .

You may say, "Well, it's California . . . they're nuts anyway.  It will not effect me here in Iowa."

Really?

The major printers of educational material do not try to publish textbooks and primers for each individual state.  Instead, larger states - such as California, New York, Texas - have mandates for education that the publishers follow in order to remain profitable.  That makes sense; it is good business to create a generalized product that sells to the larger consumer group.  Consequently, however, smaller states will use this material, which means what is taught in Wisconsin may well be influenced by what New York wants.

Or, California.

Bill Gates, Grace Hopper, and Alan Turing . . . each a giant in the history of computer science, but only one likely to be a role model in California schools because of what he did outside the computer lab.