Appearing on ABC, former Chicago Mayor and Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on Friday volunteered some suggestions for an economic recovery plan that America’s next president could implement. “One of the things we’ve got to do to rebuild, mainly on infrastructure,” he begins, before switching to additional ideas for also offering a more promising future to laid-off retail workers by trying to train them for better jobs. “There’s going to be people like at JCPenney and other retail — those jobs aren’t coming back. Give them the tools…”
One such possible job he offered as an example? Computer programming. “Six months, you’re going to become a computer coder. We’ll pay for it…. we need to give them a lifeline to what’s the next chapter.” He believes lots of people would be interested. Although before any of that, Rahm stressed, “The first part of the stimulus is creating a floor so the economy doesn’t sink any more. You can’t get an economy growing if states and companies are laying people off.”
While computer programming was apparently meant as just one example of possible jobs training programs, this appears to have been twisted into claims that Rahm Emanuel believes millions of laid off retail workers should become computer programmers.
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp does point out that Emanuel has held a long-standing faith in the potential of computer science education. (“Before leaving office, Emanuel worked to make Computer Science a high school graduation requirement beginning with the Class of 2020, although the Chicago Public Schools waived the requirement this year, citing the pandemic.”) But is that also one possible solution for older generations who didn’t receive computer science training in high school?
What do Slashdot’s readers think? Leave your own thoughts in the comments. Should retraining programs offered to laid-off retail workers Include computer programming?
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot