Tim Cook has been vocal about his education views in the past and now the White House is coming to him for advice. According to a new report from Bloomberg, Tim Cook and Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs are among people the White House is approaching for help with STEM funding and more…
The report explains that Ivanka Trump is spearheading the efforts, coming to both Powell and Cook for advice on funding science, technology, engineering, and math in United States public schools. President Trump’s daughter, along with Reed Cordish, the president’s special assistant for technology initiatives, held a conference call on Wednesday with politicians, educators, and CEOs to discuss STEM education and funding.
Other participants on the roughly hour-long call included Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson; Accenture North America’s CEO Julie Sweet, Microsoft President Brad Smith; Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and representatives from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Stanford, MIT and Broward County, Florida, Schools.
At this point, the effort on the Trump administration’s side is in its beginning stages. Specific details such as timing and funding have not yet been decided, but the administration plans to hold an open dialogue with leaders such as Cook.
Tim Cook has been vocal about his education views in the past. The Apple CEO has been a strong proponent of teaching coding to kids at a young age, making it a required course much like foreign languages. With Cook now having a direct line to the White House’s education efforts, he can better influence and voice his opinion.
Cook spoke on this last month during a roundtable with President Trump:
Secondly, totally unrelated, but something I feel very passionate about: coding should be a requirement in every public school. We have a huge deficit in the skills that we need today, versus the skills that are there, and we’re trying to do our part or, hopefully, more than our part in doing that. But I think leadership from government is also key.
What comes from the White House’s STEM efforts remains to be seen, but we’ll be sure to update as to how Cook’s role transforms throughout the process.
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