Comment Voc-Ed or Navel Gazing? (Score 1) 709
The perennial question ought to be "Why should we teach kids to program?" Was it the essence of the industrial revolution to teach every child to operate a spinning jenny or a steam engine? Society's goal ought not to be to make each student a master of the newest tool, but to teach them how to live in a society which that new tool has changed. Some will naturally gravitate toward the technological side, and may become invaluable for the abilities they develop, but the world does not need a population of composers, designers, writers, builders, leaders and more who are first of all amateur programmers.
Certainly those of us who write code needed this vocational education, but it is shortsighted or arrogant to think everyone else does.