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Disney Thinks High Schools Should Let Kids Take Coding In Place of Foreign Languages
theodp writes:
Florida lawmakers are again proposing a contentious plan that would put coding and foreign language on equal footing in a public high school student's education. Under a proposed bill students who take two credits of computer coding and earn a related industry certification could then count that coursework toward two foreign language credits.
"I sort of comically applaud that some would want to categorize coding as a foreign language," said Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho. "Coding cannot be seen as an equivalent substitute." Disclosure records show that Walt Disney Parks and Resorts has three lobbyists registered to fight in support of the bill. Disney did not return an email seeking comment, but State Senator Jeff Brandes said the company's interest is in a future workforce... Disney has provided signature tutorials for the nation's Hour of Code over the past three years, including Disney's Frozen princess-themed tutorial.
"I sort of comically applaud that some would want to categorize coding as a foreign language," said Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho. "Coding cannot be seen as an equivalent substitute." Disclosure records show that Walt Disney Parks and Resorts has three lobbyists registered to fight in support of the bill. Disney did not return an email seeking comment, but State Senator Jeff Brandes said the company's interest is in a future workforce... Disney has provided signature tutorials for the nation's Hour of Code over the past three years, including Disney's Frozen princess-themed tutorial.
Coding is not for everyone and not everyone will gain even a modest benefit from learning coding. Furthermore this shit is going to be highly automated over the coming decade or two. We need to teach kids stuff to make them well rounded, not just a fucking outdated cog.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
So, if you look at the foreign language requirement for what it is (an "expand your mind" requirement), then it is plainly obvious that coding achieves the same objective.
Joel Spolsky,in his rant on Java Schools, sort of touches on this:
Heck, in 1900, Latin and Greek were required subjects in college, not because they served any purpose, but because they were sort of considered an obvious requirement for educated people. In some sense my argument is no different that the argument made by the pro-Latin people (all four of them). âoe[Latin] trains your mind. Trains your memory. Unraveling a Latin sentence is an excellent exercise in thought, a real intellectual puzzle, and a good introduction to logical thinking,â writes Scott Barker. But I canâ(TM)t find a single university that requires Latin any more. Are pointers and recursion the Latin and Greek of Computer Science?
Granted, he is arguing for CS students always having to learn fundamental CS concepts like pointers and recursion, but I think that it is not too much of a stretch to think that coding will eventually become the Latin and Greek of our culture. Everybody should have to learn a bit of it if they want to consider themselves well educated and well rounded, and a small number will choose to specialize in it as a field of endeavor.
And if you are thinking to yourself, "Well, what's the point, they won't remember any of it?" Please go find any random middle aged person whose only exposure to foreign language was their 2 year requirement in high school and ask them how much Spanish, French, German, etc. they remember? Hint: their high school foreign language class didn't make them an expert in the foreign language, so would two years of programming in high school be seen as any less valuable from a macro-pedagogic perspective?
They're not going to give them any jobs.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Of the people who know Latin, only the idiots who didn't learn enough of it to read well ever say that one needs to learn Latin as an intellectual puzzle. The rest of us appreciate the ability to pick up and read literary (and scientific and historical) texts from medieval and early modern Europe (and dissertations up to the early twentieth century from some European universities) no matter what the nationality or native tongue of the author. The surviving Latin-language output of the sixteenth century alone is two or three orders of magnitude (yes, really) the size of all the literature surviving from the ancient world, and most of it was never translated into English. You don't learn Latin to learn a puzzle: you learn it as a key to unlocking vast libraries of literature that most people don't know ever existed. There's a long, eighteenth-century epic poem (the Rusticatio Mexicana) on the hardworking people of Mexico and their oppression by Europeans. There are treatises on state action against non-state actors (like Grotius' De iure piratarum) that still have an impact on international law and the controversial idea of treating terrorists as hostes humani generis. There are histories of the Americas, Africa, Asia, even the early Jesuit visits to China and Japan, all in Latin, and not translated into English. When you learn Latin well enough actually to read it, without puzzling over it or needing a dictionary, you open yourself up to being able to discover vast swaths of human intellect and history to which you have no access otherwise.