Should We Teach Coding in High School?

Robert Sedgewick and Larry Cuban faced off today in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on the issue:

Should everyone be taught coding in high school?

Today we will discuss their recent comments on this issue.

Bob is a long-time friend of mine, so I want to say that that up front. He is a professor of computer science at Princeton. Cuban is an emeritus professor of education at Stanford. Note, I do not know Cuban but will call him Larry—I hope that is fine. Besides what they say in the article, Larry wrote a three–part series in 2017 on his own education blog, while Bob was associated with a 2013 White House-led initiative on coding in schools.

The article consists of ten short paragraphs by Bob followed by eleven from Larry. This is sequential structure—like with statements —or like having candidate town-halls for consectuive hours on CNN and such. What we’d like to see is a debate—like having parallel processes that must sync and communicate. Below we imagine one based on statements in the article.

A Conversation

The following is a paraphrase that tries to re-structure some of the article in debate format.

Bob: Teaching students to code will help them understand logical thinking, and foster creativity.

Larry: You could say the same for teaching writing, math, history, and many others subjects. There is no research that shows that coding is better than other topics in this regard.

Bob: I am not aware of any research that shows that each topic that is taught now is better than coding.

Larry: Yes that is true, but consider how durable core education has been for our society. A century ago, industrial groups pushed the federal government to require vocational training in schools for particular industrial and agricultural skills and to establish separate vocational schools. Those undermined the broader goals of social development and civic engagement.

Bob: Technology is basic to much of society’s issues. Perhaps the Iowa caucus fiasco could have been avoided if they had a better understanding of computing.

Larry: I think the main argument for coding is being pushed by technology CEO’s. They need more coders. The educational system should not just do what they need. Do you not agree Bob?

Bob: If we teach coding it seems that it may help in lessening economic and gender based gaps. In summary, in the last millennium, education was based on reading, writing, and arithmetic. Perhaps we should now switch to reading, writing, and computing. Coding includes arithmetic and a whole lot more.

Larry: I agree education should help students achieve their potential. I just do not see that coding will do this. And further, data and projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show only an 11 percent increase in IT jobs, from 4.5 to 5 million, between 2018 and 2028. That’s going out a whole decade and still IT will only be about 3 percent of all jobs. Health care will grow in that time by as many jobs as IT has total.

Bob: Those percentages hide much of the benefit. Only a fraction of the thousands I have taught—in person and online—work in tech companies. The rest have gone into a broad variety of careers. Coding literacy is becoming a necessity in health care, social assistance, business services, construction, entertainment, manufacturing, and even politics.

Larry: But what would you cut to make room? Foreign language? History? Arts or music? Or decrease other aspects of math and science? Curricula are already crowded with required courses and frequent testing.

Open Problems

What should the role of coding be in our society? Who is right?