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How Silicon Valley Pushed Coding Into American Classrooms
theodp writes: Noting that Apple CEO Tim Cook's advice for President Trump at last week's White House gathering of the Tech Titans was that "coding should be a requirement in every public school," the New York Times examines How Silicon Valley Pushed Coding Into American Classrooms (Warning: source may be paywalled). "The Apple chief's education mandate was just the latest tech company push for coding courses in schools," writes Natasha Singer. "But even without Mr. Trump's support, Silicon Valley is already advancing that agenda -- thanks largely to the marketing prowess of Code.org, an industry-backed nonprofit group." Singer continues: "In a few short years, Code.org has raised more than $60 million from Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Salesforce, along with individual tech executives and foundations. It has helped to persuade two dozen states to change their education policies and laws, Mr. Hadi Partovi, co-founder of Code.org, said, while creating free introductory coding lessons, called Hour of Code, which more than 100 million students worldwide have tried. Along the way, Code.org has emerged as a new prototype for Silicon Valley education reform: a social-media-savvy entity that pushes for education policy changes, develops curriculums, offers online coding lessons and trains teachers -- touching nearly every facet of the education supply chain. The rise of Code.org coincides with a larger tech-industry push to remake American primary and secondary schools with computers and learning apps, a market estimated to reach $21 billion by 2020." Singer also mentions Apple's work to spread computer science in schools. The company launched a free app last year called Swift Playgrounds to teach basic coding in Swift, as well as a yearlong curriculum for high schools and community colleges to teach app design in Swift.
Gimme a f***ing break! The kids are inside studying Art, Literature and other mostly useless subjects and you're arguing that coding is a waste of their time? They'd be better off on the playground than learning about computers? Idiot. Why would kids think this particular subject is their future any more than they would think accounting or any other subject is their future?
Obsolescence? So what? Every single programming language you'll ever encounter is going to use fundamental concepts like sequences, selections, loops & data structures. Learning these concepts is valuable even if they forget the syntax of the language they're learning on. Algorithms is another inherently valuable concept. Kids these days will encounter 1000s of devices that use some form of code to function. Learning the basics of how these things work is an invaluable part of their education.
Are you sure you're not in a shitty mood that's clouding your thinking?
Good job OP. Keep up the good work.
I remember in middle school Math was a requirement to graduate and go to high school. Yet most people that took that class left without knowing anything they ever used again.
I remember in middle school English was a requirement to graduate and go to high school. Yet most people that took that class left without knowing anything they ever used again.
I remember in middle school Science was a requirement to graduate and go to high school. Yet most people that took that class left without knowing anything they ever used again.
Yet some people did. The point is to expose kids to something new that *some* of them will use again.