School days, school days,
good old fashioned . . .
Reading and writing and ‘rithmetic . . . . and
coding.
Coding apparently is the hottest
trend in education. Or, more accurately, coding is what Silicon Valley’s
digital masterminds are trying to make the hottest trend.
“Coding should be a
requirement in every public school,” Apple CEO Tim Cooke told a gathering of
top-drawer techies at the U.S. White House recently.
Coding is a set of instructions
telling a computer what you want it to do. Computers run on binary code – combinations of 1s and 0s. To
put all the 1s and 0s in the right order for a computer to understand, you have
to learn programming languages such as Python, Ruby, Java, C++ and others.
High-tech advocates of
coding have been raising tens of millions of dollars to persuade governments to
make coding mandatory in school curriculum. Their argument is that millions of
future jobs will require advanced computer knowledge and skills.
British Columbia, New
Brunswick and Nova Scotia already have made learning coding a mandatory part of
their curriculums. Ontario and Saskatchewan have included it as an option.
Some people question whether
the high tech industry simply is trying to sway governments to serve its own
interests.
We live in the digital age
so it is important that tomorrow’s workers have a high level of computer
literacy. However, there is much hype behind the high-tech industry’s campaign
to have coding learning become mandatory in all schools.
Some advocates say learning
coding has become as important as learning to read and write. Coding teaches
people how to think, they argue.
Perhaps, but let’s not get
carried away. Most of us have learned how to think without knowing how to code,
and we got that learning through reading, writing and talking to each other.
We should be careful not to
let the computer age lessen the importance of basic reading and writing skills.
It already has in many ways.
Our communication skills have
declined in the computer age. We have less time to read, speak too often with
abbreviations (LOL,TMI, OMG, IMFO, FYI) and
tech talk phrases, and have less face-to-face communication.
Social media, which have
created important communications channels, allows us to take in and spread more
information. Regretfully, too much social networking information lacks depth,
is missing context, or is not factual.
Declining communications
skills are seen every day in our political and other community leaders. Many
lack the skills needed to speak or write clearly and precisely what they want
to tell their followers. The result often is confusion and conflict.
Obviously it is important
for people today to have a basic knowledge of computers because so many of our
daily activities are connected to computers. That does not mean that we all
need to learn computer coding, or that computer coding is a must for all
elementary school kids.
Most of us drive automobiles
but learning how to drive was not part of our elementary schooling. What we
were taught in school were math, physics, biology, English grammar and other
subjects that would help us to understand and learn the individual skills
needed for driving a vehicle.
Those and other school study
subjects remain important in developing understanding and skills for work in
the computer age. For most kids, a general knowledge and understanding of
computerization is all they need and all that the schools should be teaching.
Learning coding should not
be a high priority for all school kids and we should not be diverting education
money away from traditional subjects to provide it.
Options can be provided in
higher grades for kids who show a serious bent towards computer careers.
The high-tech world entices
us with wizard talk about how it can make our world better. It has in many ways,
but we need to be skeptical and ask pointed questions. The drive to have all
children learn coding is a case in point.
So when corporate sloganeers
spin ideas with buzzwords such as ‘Thinking Outside the Box,’ we need to pause,
look them in the eye and say “Ditch the box. Just think.”
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