ACM Urges Obama To Include CS In K-12 Core

jmcbain writes "The ACM issued a set of recommendations supporting Barack Obama's stated goal of making science and mathematics education a national priority at the K-12 level. The ACM is urging the new administration to include Computer Science as an integral part of the nation's education system. 'The new Administration can play an important role in strengthening middle school education, where action can really make a difference, to introduce these students to computer science,' said ACM CEO John White." Is CS such a basic subject, at the level of science or math, that it makes sense to (try to) teach its principles to every elementary school child?

Comments

Why?

[Animats]

The US only has about 26,000 real computer scientists. The number of programmers without a theory background is much higher. That in turn is dwarfed by the "information technology" people, "power users", and users generally.

So why should kids be forced to learn "computer science"? One could make a better case for teaching auto mechanics or machine shop skills.

Re:They can't learn

[WaroDaBeast]

They used to teach a lot of things in elementary school that people these days think are college level: grammar, spelling, latin, greek, algebra, basic chemistry, debate, logic.

Ah, this explains why all those American students didn't know what a semicolon was for.