Con: Coding shouldn’t be taught early

The Information Age, characterized by a shift from a traditional industrial economy to an economy based on information technology, has seen a high demand for coding skills — a demand that has already begun to reflect in education as early as the elementary school level.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in STEM occupations grew by 10.1 percent from 2009 to 2015 and is projected to grow by a another 23 percent by 2024. Surprisingly, however, the number of computer programmers themselves is projected to decline.

Due to the perception of an abundant, ever-growing job market in computer science (CS), many schools have begun teaching it at earlier ages, even in elementary schools. Although this line of thinking is well intentioned and strives to bolster interest in the subject, making these skills mandatory won’t suddenly create legions of new, eager programmers.

Required CS classes are helpful for students who want to pursue a STEM-related career, but this becomes an issue when it is forced onto students interested in other disciplines. For these people, a large chunk of their studying would be occupied by something they don’t care about. Additionally, the skills would be quickly forgotten. Unlike some subjects like mathematics or physics, coding has little use in daily life, reducing the opportunity for real-world applications, and essentially rendering courses useless.

Here at SHS, the popularity of CS is reflected in the number of people who sign up to take the Intro to Computer Science or Computer Science AP classes each year. But only 168 out of the 1,341, or 12.5 percent of the students, are enrolled in a CS-related course, a small percentage of the whole student body.

Over all four years, only 50 percent of the students coming through the school would take a CS class during that time. Of those, a hefty portion take the class to satisfy the Applied Arts credit requirements or to decorate their resume with another AP course. If half of the students are not willing to take CS on their own, the class should not be forced onto all students. Even in other schools in the Bay Area and other tech hotspots, this percentage is not substantial enough to be considered prevalent. There is no point in trying to make younger students learn a topic not all high school students feel motivated to learn.

Furthermore, students in elementary and middle schools have not yet developed a strong work ethic and are not used to long school hours or spending significant amounts of time on homework. Adding an extra subject to learn will either lessen the time they have to learn more useful subjects or increase the amount of total time they spend learning, both of which will burden students with unnecessary troubles.

The teaching of the material will also be less efficient. Coding requires a strong mathematics background and an analytical mindset, and students in the early grades mostly lack the cognitive readiness to master these skills. Classes taught early on, like mathematics, are meant to build a solid foundation for learning later on. Taking these classes that teach the basics is essential before moving on to take the more advanced classes.

Despite the perceived benefits, implementing coding into the mandatory early learning curriculum is counterproductive and will result in a more deficient education for students, especially young ones.

Rather than making coding a requirement, making it available in middle schools as an elective would prove much more effective. It allows determined young students to explore their interests in hot areas while not forcing others to do the same and possibly ruin other parts of their education.