50% of Parents in the US Believe Coding Most Beneficial Subject For Their Children, 75% Believe Big Tech Firms Should Be Involved in Helping Schools: Study (microsoft.com)

Long time reader theodp writes: According to a Microsoft-commissioned survey, 50% of parents in the U.S. with children aged 18 and under believed coding and computer programming to be the most beneficial subject to their child's future employability ("compared to foreign language skills at 28%"). From the Microsoft Education blog post: "When asked about the technology industry's involvement, 75 percent of parents said they believe big tech companies should be involved in helping schools build kids' digital skills. Many companies, including Microsoft and organizations like Code.org, are working to do just that. Programs like TEALS, which is supported by Microsoft Philanthropies, pairs trained Computer Science professionals from across the technology industry with classroom teachers to team-teach the subject." In 2016, Microsoft partnered with Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo to help bring computer science education to every public K-12 school across the state, an initiative that Raimondo is now touting in her 2018 bid for re-election (political ad).

Comments

Coding for what?

[Brett Buck]

Writing software is intended to serve a purpose, not just making programs for the hell of it. What the heck problem does a kid need to solve with software? Kids need to learn basic math and science, not screwing around with computers. Writing code is a trivial side issue related to solving other problems, not an end to itself.

Re:Coding for what?

[Kjella]

As soon as you need reliability, security and performance, coding becomes anything but trivial. It also becomes something most people cannot master.

Most people also can't master math, it doesn't mean math classes are a bad idea. Most people are absolutely terrible at breaking down a problem into individual steps and explaining them to someone with no subject experience. See every business requirements specification ever written. It's going to be a terribly hard class because the computer can't coddle you, it doesn't know how. I think if you're looking at it as a software creation training class you're missing the biggest benefit, it's a logic/problem solving class. And while you can't make miracles training helps.

Critical reading skills

[Luckyo]

Let me help you. The story starts with:

"According to a Microsoft-commissioned survey"

Questions that you should ask:

1. How does "more coding for children" help or hurt Microsoft?
2. How does "having big tech firms involved in helping schools" help or hurt Microsoft?

Answer those two questions, then read the claims again.