George Rebane
[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 4 March 2020.]
As more and more young people finish their education today with unemployable skill sets, while employers are looking for people who can think on their feet and solve problems, the question of whether and how to teach high schoolers the elements of programming comes up. Given that our world is now almost entirely software driven, and will become even more so tomorrow, you would think that programming or learning to code should become one of an educated citizen’s basic skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetic which reached those expectations over a hundred years ago.
But there is a curious mix of people who argue against teaching such a skill to students in our public schools. Some see acquiring coding skills to be equivalent to vocational training, against which many have argued for decades. It’s hard to believe that there were educators against teaching high schoolers skills with which to earn a living after graduation, especially when so few students went on to college. Stanford professor of computer science Robert Sedgewick points out that coding “is not vocational training any more than English is vocational training for journalists or economics is vocational training for business executives.”
In the early part of the 20th century more than 90% of students entered the workforce without college degrees. But our schools did teach them skills beyond literacy and arithmetic that were needed in the workplace. Yet academics like former Stanford education professor Dr Larry Cuban continue to argue that coding is the same as teaching vocational skills such as machine shop and home economics. Such courses for them have been a wrong-headed “imposition of those requirements (that) for years served to undermine the broader cultural goals of public schools—such as social mobility, individual development and civic engagement.” Yet everyone today knows that all of those broader cultural goals are only possible for those who can be gainfully employed.
In response, Dr Sedgewick points out that “teaching students to code introduces them to logical thinking, as well as fostering creativity and problem-solving skills. It encourages experimentation, develops persistence and promotes collaboration. Learning to think as a coder gives one a valuable set of strategies for understanding a variety of situations that one will encounter later in life—particularly those who are working outside of tech.” (more here and here)
In my own teaching experience, I have confirmed that learning to code is also a painless introduction to critical thinking. The experience provides a gender-free sense of empowerment, as the students make machines and data sing at the touch of their finger. Coding and algorithmics – devising stepwise procedures for efficiently solving problems – are fields connected at the hip. Immersive coding is a ‘flow experience’, almost like being in another universe that contains its own resources and rules for new and powerful tools. Tools which you control and with which you can assemble wondrous machines. For young people anticipating college or a job after high school, having mastered the elements of coding is tremendously empowering as they experience the opening of new worlds of possibilities and understanding.
But today we also have an emerging dark side of coding and computer science, one more political enterprise that is seeking a foothold in secondary education. It is called ‘culturally responsive computing’, and is devised by the politically correct mavens of identity politics. The proposed curriculum is primarily directed at minorities, and claims to educate students through the implementation of “computing-culture connections” that inject such arcane concepts as “African mathematics”. The entire enterprise is a massive diversion from teaching kids substantive skills valuable for work and further studies. Fundamentally, it is one more area of ethnic-gender education that would join the other useless but feel-good subjects which already displace substantive learning in our public schools. Look for it at a school district near you. (more here)
In the meantime, I strongly recommend that you support the advent and expansion of STEM subjects that include computer science and coding in your local high schools. Our young people need every bit of it that they can handle in a world where they will spend the rest of their lives.
My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively. However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
rebanesruminations.com 
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