Communications of the ACM
Coding Kids
Parents are coming realize the importance of coding education for their children.
Credit: Brian Finke
As the importance of programming as a life skill grows, parents are beginning to seek coding education for their children. Some parents are hiring tutors to teach their children programming, both as a strategically valuable skill and as an intellectual exercise.
"Coding is absolutely a question of literacy," says Georgia Institute of Technology professor Mark Guzdial. "Those who don’t have access to this kind of education are going to be missing a core skill."
Concerns about economic inequality are rising as more affluent families pay for coding opportunities that lower-income families cannot afford. "I think this is the most important issue domestically. It's frightening. Parents who have money are pushing their kids to learn coding," says Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani. "Kids whose parents don't have money are being left behind."
Even as the tech industry forecasts a shortfall of 1 million workers by 2020, 90 percent of U.S. high schools do not offer computer programming. "We have a clear disparity between the needs of industry and the number of computer-science graduates we produce," Harvey Mudd College president and former ACM president Maria M. Klawe recently told a Senate committee. "We simply do not have enough students graduating high school with an interest in pursuing computer science."
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