Recently, Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple, advised US president that they should teach coding in every public school as a compulsory subject. This will prepare children to be productive employees. Tech industry in Silicon Valley is struggling hard to fill coding jobs. And there is so much of unemployment. Code.org an industry financed non-profit was started in 2012. It has raised $60 million donations from Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Facebook and Dropbox. It offers online training and teaches teachers, develop school curriculum on how to do coding.
But critics are suspecting this interference of high tech in school curriculum. Tech industry is motivated to recruit coders at young age. They are not interested in courses that promote critical thinking. Critical thinking is important in long run for decisions a person makes for his life.
Coding is highly specialized education. New advancements in tech industry can make old coding obsolete fast. Broader problem solving approach comes from critical thinking and not from coding.
Jane Margolis, a researcher at UCLA, Los Angeles said, “it gets problematic when an industry decides content and direction of public education”. Shamefully, an Idaho state bill reads, “increase computer science instructions from kindergarten to 12th grade, be driven by the needs of industry and develop in partnership with industry”.
This Idaho State Law has been criticized throughout United States as bad for education. Data Sciences should not be more important than teaching students about critical thinking, about communities and about life in general.
The lesson for the Republic of India is clear here: do not get overwhelmed by fancy images of computer science at the cost of general education that teaches critical thinking. Smart parents will not let politicians and profiteering schools misguide them or their children.
Robots will replace coders, common sense and language are not replaceable.
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