Apple CEO Tim Cook: I'd Require All Children To Start Coding In 4th Grade (thehill.com)

This week Apple CEO Tim Cook argued at Startup Fest Europe that coding should be a 'second language' taught to all children. theodp shares two quotes from a YouTube video. "We fundamentally believe that coding is a language and that just like other languages are required in school, coding should be required in school," Cook stated. "I do think coding is as important-- if not more important -- as the second language that most people learn in today's world," Cook later added... "I would go in and make coding a requirement starting at the fourth or fifth grade, and I would build on that year after year after year...I think we're doing our kids a disservice if we're not teaching them and introducing them in that way."
Meanwhile, The Hill reported this week that The Computer Science Education Coalition -- which includes Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and dozens of other companies -- hired a fourth "advocacy firm" that specializes in "mobilizing groups of people to influence outcomes...to help convince policymakers to provide money to computer science education for grades K-12," and they're seeking an initial investment of $250 million. I'd be curious to hear what Slashdot readers think about government funding of grade school coding classes.

Comments

Re:Oh for fuck's sake

[PopeRatzo]

Guess what? Jasper Johns thinks that everybody ought to learn to paint. Magic Johnson thinks everyone should learn to play basketball.

They're ALL wrong.

I would suggest that learning to paint and play basketball in the 4th grade will serve you better over your lifetime than learning to code.

Re:I'd argue we need more humanities

[Anonymous Coward]

After graduating with STEM degrees, I've spent much of my time reading about history. It's one of my favorite subjects. I'm not sure it would have worked out quite as well going the opposite direction of getting a degree in history, then teaching myself quantum mechanics, differential geometry and semiconductor electronics.

Re:Oh for fuck's sake

[dgatwood]

He's wrong, but not for the reason you think. He's wrong because fourth grade is way too late to start teaching kids to code. Computer programming is a language skill, and the later you learn, the harder it is to learn. You're better off teaching them the basics in first or second grade and then building it up a little bit at a time over the next decade.

And everybody ought to learn to paint and play basketball, too, at least a little bit. When I was a kid, we had art and music once a week, we had actual PE during recess some of the time. And so on. Not all of us went on to become artists or basketball players (for example, I only became decent at art when they invented multiple levels of "Undo", and I still can't shoot baskets to save my life), but exposing everyone to those skills early in life means that those who have the natural aptitude for them are more likely to become good at them. And for everyone else, as long as it is enjoyable and failure isn't treated as a mark of shame, there's no harm in teaching a wider range of skills in our schools.

In fact, I'd argue that the worst thing that has happened in our education system in the past couple of decades is the reduction in arts and music education. There's a strong correlation between musicianship and computer programming abilities. Yet for some baffling reason, we keep seeing schools reducing funding for the single most generally accessible way for students to learn the core skills that computer science depends upon:

• The ability to simultaneously interpret something at both a detailed (notes) and at a high level (musicianship)
• Grasp of how complex things are composed of many smaller things, such as individual instrument parts in a large ensemble work, and learning how they all fit together
• Basic algorithmic thinking, such as loops and conditional branching
• Reasoning skills (the sound system doesn't work; let's figure out why)
• Fractions (You can't learn to read music without it, so students who learn music as kids have a huge leg up in math later on.)

and so on. It amazes me that after decades of cuts in music education, suddenly, the tech industry wonders why CS graduation rate is declining. Well, duh. You can't lump computer science in with STEM and expect to get good outcomes. Computer science is not a science, nor is it math.

Sure, there are aspects of science and math in computer science, just as there are aspects of science and math in music—acoustics and psychoaccoustics, metrical division of measures, relationships between frequency and pitch and wavelength, and so on. And sure, when you make music or write code, you have to follow certain rules or it won't compile (performers won't be able to play it). However, on top of that foundation of rules and technical details, there's a huge mountain of artisanship, and that's what makes the difference between someone who does well in CS and someone who doesn't.

Performing music and writing software are closely related skills; composing music and writing computer software are nearly identical skills, and use basically the same parts of the brain in the same way. The difference is that most kids won't get interested in something that looks boring, and they initially see computers as boring. Music doesn't have that problem.

Of course, if we could make programming more fun, that might help, at least a little, but either way, the best way to end up with more programmers is by having more music classes, more art classes, more dance, more theater, more... everything but STEM. There's some irony for you.

Re:I'd argue we need moalready to mucre humanities

[dgatwood]

The schools are already busy teaching kids to be wimpy little fucks, and know-nothings. They don't need to be teaching "humanities" IMO.

That's sarcasm, right? I hope so. A shocking percentage of computer programmers are musicians (at least 3x as many as in the general population), and this correlation is not a coincidence. Music in the schools teaches skills that give students a leg up in math classes later, and also teaches them skills that make it easier for them to understand how to write code later.

And language skills are also important to learning CS. That's where we learn the basic concepts of grammar that we later build upon when learning about how compilers work.

And history teaches us to avoid making the same stupid mistakes time and time again, and thus greatly increases our chances of still being around to write software in a hundred years.

All of these skills are of vital importance to computer science. Learning science without learning the arts will get you a generation of people who can't program their way out of a paper bag, because they've never learned spatial skills by studying art and perspective, or learned how to create large works of art from a million tiny brush strokes; they've never learned how to see a symphony as a collection of tiny notes, each one equally important; they've never learned to simultaneously use both sides of their brain to precisely count the duration of notes while emotionally feeling how to express them dynamically; and so on.

So no, reducing humanities education is not the solution to the problem. It is the problem.

Re: Why?

[prefec2]

Even if we had computing classes for 4th graders. It would not help. You cannot teach everybody coding. The kids will hate it. It could be even counter productive.

In the past they lured more people into CS courses at university. Most of these extra people drop out or switch to something else. CS is not for everyone. Like engineering and the sciences you need to have a specific mindset for it. If anything would help then it would be training those skills. But I doubt it would significantly increase the output of coders.

BTW in future we will need less coders, as more stuff will be generated automatically.