By Alec Rellora | Staff writer
In January, the U.S. unemployment rate decreased to 6.6 percent, the lowest it has been in the past five years, according to Trading Economics. Meanwhile, most American elementary schools are still dedicating obscene amounts of time on learning cursive and reading about the Iditarod. In Estonia, however, they’ve been teaching their first-graders how to write computer code with a pilot program named ProgeTiiger.
Coding in schools is slowly becoming the norm within well-developed nations. A recent initiative in the United Kingdom to push a curriculum with coding in the center has proven to be successful, making it one of the first major nations in the world teaching computer science nationally. As more and more nations begin to teach their kids how to code, the United States hasn’t joined in on any of the fun. A notable absence from our Common Core standards is content regarding computer science. We live in a world of computers and technology. If we don’t start teaching our kids about what goes on behind their iPad, computers will surely add to the list of things the United States is behind on.
As the importance of iPhone applications and websites increase, coding becomes a more important skill that may very well become a necessary skill. As we shift to a nation of technology, the common workforce will slowly shift in a similar direction. Compare the Web to a newly formed nation and those who can code as the architects who design how this nation looks, how information is transmitted, what you can do, and virtually what the current culture is like. While many people believe the United States has a shortage of jobs, Americans just aren’t looking hard enough. We don’t have an overabundance of computer engineers in the United States, and as technology advances, the need for more computer engineers will increase, making coding a necessary tool for employment in the future of America. Non-profit computer education website, www.code.org, argued that about one million jobs in the United States don’t get filled as a result of 90 percent of schools not teaching code.
Several people more talented than I have advocated the expansion of coding in education, from Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates to more random people like Will.i.am and Chris Bosh. Zuckerberg would go on to create this small, obscure website named Facebook. Websites, like www. code.org and Code Academy, have sought to fight the good fight against the illiteracy in computers by offering free, interactive lessons on how to code. Code Academy is currently developing the curriculum for England’s primary and secondary schools while also offering that curriculum for free to anyone. They even have an iPhone app to learn on! Instead of trying to break your Flappy Bird score, you could easily learn how to create a game even more addictive than Flappy Bird!
Coding is the language of computers and we now live in a computer driven world. With 90 percent of schools not teaching kids how to code, it renders most of our future as illiterate to what’ll soon be common knowledge in the United Kingdom, but that’s nothing new.