It's more a question of trying to fit everyone into the same mold. Literally teaching every student to code makes about as much sense as teaching every student to weld, or play piano, or learn Latin, or <insert other specialty skill here>. Not that knowing any of those things is bad (most are probably beneficial) but it's ignoring the individuality of the students.
Not every kid is interested in programming. Schools would do better if they could do a little more to nurture the abilities and interests of their students rather than try to fit them into a one-for-all standard curriculum.
At my school we were taught an instrument (for a while, to see if it took), introduced to shopwork including welding, and taught Latin for several years.
That last one is less useful but I wouldn't compare it in any way to basic computer programming, which allows some insight into the running of the modern world.
Just saw an amazing comment about this over at the register - 'Democracy requires every person to understand the world to some degree. Computers are an important part of our world. So people need to have at least a general idea about how they work. They need to know what they do where their inherent limitations are.'
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It's more a question of trying to fit everyone into the same mold. Literally teaching every student to code makes about as much sense as teaching every student to weld, or play piano, or learn Latin, or <insert other specialty skill here>. Not that knowing any of those things is bad (most are probably beneficial) but it's ignoring the individuality of the students.
Not every kid is interested in programming. Schools would do better if they could do a little more to nurture the abilities and interests of their students rather than try to fit them into a one-for-all standard curriculum.
At my school we were taught an instrument (for a while, to see if it took), introduced to shopwork including welding, and taught Latin for several years.
That last one is less useful but I wouldn't compare it in any way to basic computer programming, which allows some insight into the running of the modern world.
Just saw an amazing comment about this over at the register - 'Democracy requires every person to understand the world to some degree. Computers are an important part of our world. So people need to have at least a general idea about how they work. They need to know what they do where their inherent limitations are.'