Programming needs to be part of our children’s curriculum now
Speaking in an interview at Startup Fest Europe with Neelie Kroes, a former EU commissioner for the digital agenda, Apple CEO Tim Cook outlined his views on teaching children coding.
I do think coding is as important — if not more important — as the second language that most people learn in today’s world (…) I would go in and make coding a requirement starting at the fourth or fifth grade, and I would build on that year after year after year… I think we’re doing our kids a disservice if we’re not teaching them and introducing them in that way.”
I couldn’t agree more.
We are living through fast-changing times: in less than a decade, it is possible that the concept of work will have changed so drastically that many people will be working in professions that don’t even exist as yet and that we will be surrounded by programmable objects. Which is why knowing how to program will be the lingua franca of the future, a basic life skill, a way of interacting with the environment we live in, a way of permanently exchanging information between us and machines.
Preparing our children for these changes must surely be the biggest concern of all parents.
Take a look at the video of the interview, the quote above comes at minute 31.58:
The US Computer Science Education Coalition, a group of businesses and NGOs working toward increasing opportunities to teach technology in schools, is calling on Congress for $250 million to help keep the country competitive through education. In Europe, Kroes has signed a CodePact manifesto with Microsoft to teach programming to more than 400,000 children and to help the technology sector “find the talent it needs”.
Whether it is with that goal in mind (an approach that is certainly open to discussion), or whether through public or private initiative, teaching children how to program and to understand the technology they use every day as part of their curriculum is vital and with each day that passes, more pressing.
(En español, aquí)
