SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The rationale for this rapid curricular renovation is economic. Teaching kids how to code will help them land good jobs, the argument goes. In an era of flat and falling incomes, programming provides a new path to the middle class – a skill so widely demanded that anyone who acquires it can command a livable, even lucrative, wage.
This narrative pervades policymaking at every level, from school boards to the government. Yet it rests on a fundamentally flawed premise. Contrary to public perception, the economy doesn't actually need that many more programmers. As a result, teaching millions of kids to code won't make them all middle-class. Rather, it will proletarianize the profession by flooding the market and forcing wages down – and that's precisely the point.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Sunday September 24 2017, @06:27PM (1 child)
Back during the early days of the Qing dynasty, Hong Taiji gotten himself into a real pickle. Whenever he conquered a city, he couldn't run the place the way he wanted! Most of the previous officials were disloyal Ming nobles and they were the only people who could read and write.
So, Hong decided to do the unthinkable: He taught his Han soldiers reading, writing and basic math while structuring government in a way that distributed authority to different ministries. In fact, he came up with quite the modern government and even went on to re-appropriate lands to these loyal soldiers.
Of course, this is a repeating pattern. Western kings fought the hold of the Church over education by financing the Academy and translating \ adopting the translations of the Latin scriptures into the common languages. And when they got tired with the nobility's hold on the bureaucracy, they started financing public education. Similarity, when Russia went red, public education was soon to follow.
So while it's true that teaching kids to program is all about cutting wages, that's not to say the general public won't benefit from this. After all, you can't have a democracy when your entire economy depends on the personal abilities and accomplishments of a tiny minority.
compiling...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:37PM
On the other hand reading is a skill that has a pretty limited learning curve. You learn to read - and well, you're good to go. Writing and wordsmithing can have artistry and skill involved but it's more flourish than necessity. Programming is not like this. My university was ranked 7th overall for CS when I graduated, and the vast majority of my peers were completely incompetent. That's after 4 years at one of the premier institutions for the field.
Pretending that people can any meaningful level of competence with 'coding camps' or grade level courses is a very cruel lie. In many ways programming is more like a sport than a vocation. There is an enormous difference in quality between people, even when they receive identical training and both try their hardest. And while many will view it as just a 'thing', for others its immediately immersive - and draws them in. I love programming. I do it for a living and then on the weekends when I'm looking for something do - I do more programming. And I'm far from abnormal. People that want to get into programming, to any meaningful level, will be competing against people like me. And they're going to lose. For that matter, employers also implicitly expect people to behave like this because so many naturally do. In particular the tools of the trade are constantly changing. If you're not spending your time off playing with technologies, then in a decade (if not 5 years), you'll be obsolete.
And that threat of obsolescence is real and something unlike any other industry (except again.. oddly enough, sports). Most top companies start to consider people 'over the hill' once they hit 30. The median age at a company like Google is currently 29 [computerworld.com]. You have to keep up, or get chewed up and spit out. I would never in a million years encourage anybody to take on this job, unless they absolutely love development - in which case, nothing I could ever say would change their mind anyhow!
So yes, I do not think equating development to basic literacy is appropriate.