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Today's 6th graders will hit their prime working years in 2030.
By that time, the "robot apocalypse" could be fully upon us. Automation and artificial intelligence could have eliminated half the jobs in the United States economy.
Or, plenty of jobs could still exist, but today's students could be locked in a fierce competition for a few richly rewarded positions requiring advanced technical and interpersonal skills. Robots and algorithms would take care of what used to be solid working- and middle-class jobs. And the kids who didn't get that cutting-edge computer science course or life-changing middle school project? They'd be relegated to a series of dead-end positions, serving the elites who did.
Alternatively, maybe Bill Gates and Elon Musk and the other big names ringing the alarm are wrong. A decade from now, perhaps companies will still complain they can't find employees who can read an instruction manual and pass a drug test. Maybe workers will still be able to hold on to the American Dream, so long as they can adjust to incremental technological shifts in the workplace.
Which vision will prove correct?
30 years into the Information Revolution and schools are only just now realizing they should teach kids how to code...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Friday December 15 2017, @03:19AM
Like the robot-overlords are going to let some public school scrub compile their code. I don't find it all that surprising that the educational system has a hard time to adapt to things that are in the future. But to believe that if we all just teach the young once to code all things will be great is beyond stupidity. No learning to code is not like a spoke language, it's not more important then learning to read and write, no it's not more important then math. It's really not very important at all. You don't need to know "basic computer programming" just like you don't need to learn a lot of things in school, some of them will be nice to know (coding included) but to put some kind of emphasis on it like some quick fix magic solution? Nope.