December 25, 2008 | News

The Association for Computing Machinery (or ACM) is the largest professional computing society. It’s calling for President-elect Obama to include computer science in the Kindergarten to 12th core curriculum.

The story is being discussed on Slashdot here:

Slashdot | ACM Urges Obama To Include CS In K-12 Core

I’ll get to what I think about the ACM’s proposal later, but first I want to say that I find it amusing that lobbyist groups think that they can prevail upon Barack Obama to impose his will by fiat on the entire nation by remote control in Washington, D.C. Aren’t the people behind ACM remotely acquainted with the way education in the U.S. works? The President doesn’t set the education curriculum. States or school districts do.

On the other hand, I guess the ACM figured it could get more attention if they mentioned the word “Obama” in their press release. OK, fair enough. Testing the theory: “Obama,” “Obama,” “Obama.”

OK, now to what I think of the proposal: Well, from an objective perspective, i.e., other than from a computer science association, computer science doesn’t really belong in a core curriculum. Maybe an optional subject. That too, only for higher grades. In no case should it be taught for 13 years, every year, especially when many students are behind in true core subjects like reading, writing, and mathematics.

The problem is that computer programmers think computers are really neat, and they love the challenge of programming. For them (us), programming isn’t work, it’s a delight (but don’t tell the boss that). But they fail to recognize that that’s not true for the vast majority of the population. Everybody has their own pet subject, whether it’s classical history or organic chemistry. Students should be exposed to those subjects, but let’s not make them compulsory majors of sorts.

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