A Coding Curriculum

For ages, english, math, history, and science have been required in grammar schools and in the secondary education curriculum across the United States.  Recently, the city of Chicago has modified its public school curriculum to include code writing. According to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, in three years "you can't graduate from high school if you didn't take code writing and computer science."  This is a massive change to the default curriculums of most public schools.  This is all apart of Rahm Emanuel's five-year plan to improve computer science education in Chicago schools.  Unfortunately, many school do not offer a comprehensive coding or computer science curriculum.

The importance of a quality computer science curriculum cannot be understated due to globalized economies and the increasing reliance on computer system to control nearly every aspect of our lives. Computer science is a top paying college degree and one that will become only increasingly valued.

Rahm Emanuel is far from the only person advocating for an increased focus on computer science education.  Numerous high profile members of the tech community such as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg support Code.org which is dedicated to teaching young students how to code.  This is a part of the Hour of Code which is a global movement to teach one hour of coding education to as many people across the globe as possible.

It will be interesting to see how much the curriculum in schools will focus on computer science in the future.  Will every student be able to code?  This is certainly a desirable goal for tech companies like Google and Microsoft.  Not matter what, computing will become only more important in the future and candidates with computer experience will stand far better in the job market than those who lack such skills.  This is why it is vital that more schools teach coding and focus more attention on computer science education.  And if that is not convincing enough, the late Steve Jobs once said, "Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer... because it teaches you how to think." This is advice the American education system should not dismiss.