Reading 14

Prior to the readings, especially the Ivanka Trump: Computer Science Education a New “Priority” article, I did not know there was such a push towards giving everyone access to a computer science education. That being said, I do believe that this should be the case throughout the United States. The article states, “only 34 percent of African American students and 30 percent of rural high school students have access to a Computer Science class. Furthermore, even where classes are offered, there is a serious gender gap: less than a quarter of the students who took the [Advanced Placement Computer Science] exam nationally in 2016 were girls.” This lack of availability for such large portions of our population is troubling, as many view computer science as the future of how our businesses and economy will work. With the “treat” of automation replacing most less skilled jobs, and even some that are more specialized, being able to create or even just have an understanding of those automated tools is essential.
            Taking the other side of the CS For All movement, in the Jason Bradbury: Coding in School is a Waste of Time article, Bradbury states, “My kids won’t need to code because soon computers will just code for them.” I do not agree with this statement. While I do think that is possible that computer do code for themselves in the future, I believe that having an understanding of what that computer is doing in necessary. There is more to programming than coding, to me it is a way of thinking. Having a basic programming education through my minor in Computing and Digital Technologies, I have learned how to logically walk through problems or projects and solve them in a step by step manor. Even though I am not going into software development in my future, I am glad that I learned this way of thinking and believe that everyone should be exposed to it.
            Instituting computer science into the K-12 curriculum throughout the United States could be challenging at first. Many people do not have easy access to the technology needed to practice coding. For that reason, I think that the first few levels of computer science education should focus on the thought and problem solving process a programmer uses, and that the later years of the curriculum should focus on the technical aspects. Walking through exercises like the “how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich” thought process sparked my interest when I first started programming and think that it would spark the interests of others too. During grade school, I think in 4th and 5th grade, my school started “keyboarding” classes. This class was mandatory and we met once a week. During this time, the class met in our school computer lab and learned the positioning of letters on a keyboard and working at improving our words per minute typing rate. I can see schools implementing basic computer science classes into their curriculum in a similar way. I think that they should require everyone to take at least one of these courses, but only have it meet once a week or so. Everyone should be exposed to computer science as it is changing the way our entire lives work.


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