Communications of the ACM
Can Obama Convince High Schools To Teach Kids To Code?
Workers with STEM skills are what "today's employers are looking for to fill jobs right now and in the future," President Obama said in his State of the Union address.
Credit: Forbes
With President Obama making time in his latest State of the Union Address to address the national deficit in STEM education, there is now more momentum than ever before for the learn-to-code movement within U.S. schools. However, learning to program is difficult and getting schools — particularly public high schools — to introduce new curriculum is very slow going. While there have been some early successes — such as Codecademy and CodeHS — much still remains to be done. In fact, at a time when one of the most in-demand STEM skills is computer science, most high schools continue to neglect computer science: introductory CS courses have decreased by 17% since 2005, and only 5% of high schools now offer Advanced Placement CS.
Leaders of the learn-to-code movement view the task of getting computer science into U.S. high schools as a valuable way to give students the skills they need to become digitally literate citizens. Moreover, teaching students coding skills early will prepare them for the future workplace. In Silicon Valley, every company has a shortage of qualified developers, and this problem is rooted in problems with current approaches to early CS education. The image of computer science needs to be one that is accessible, fun, and leads to opportunities in all fields. That's one of the pluses of programs such as CodeHS — it's a way to bring CS to a high school, even if they don't have a computer science teacher. Or, consider the case of Codecademy, where thousands of users have gone on to find jobs with the new coding skills they acquired for free.
From Forbes
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