By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
X equals X plus One! Really?
No, x = x + 1 does not make sense in algebra. But yes, it is a simple but important line in a computer program, used as a “counter.” Each time a calculation is made, the program routes back through this line with a “go to” and increases the number by one, generating a numerically-ordered list in the output.
That line of partial code is all that I remember from 10 college credit hours of BASIC, FORTRAN and PASCAL computer programming courses at the university level. Wrongly considered absolutely necessary for performing science analyses, these courses were rapidly outdated and useless in my field. If a person went into a related IT job, these programming languages would have been useful for a few years. But programming continually evolves, and the learning and re-learning would have to continue.
Yet, “coding” and “computational thinking” are the current educational buzzwords, promising us that America can regain its educational prominence only if every elementary child starts coding today. Code.org is rapidly expanding efforts to get every American child coding in every school. And who is a sponsor of Code.org?: Facebook, Microsoft, Infosys Foundation USA, Amazon, Google, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and an extensive list of futuristic Ed-Teck companies and agencies that equate computer literacy and digital usage with advancement. Unfortunately, as our younger students’ obsession with digital devices increases, their performance in reading, math and science has declined.
I often joke that when we oldsters can’t figure out some new device, we have to call on a ten year old. That is to some extent true. But when those ten year olds become a few years older, they too have to re-learn on their new devices or ask younger siblings. The rate of digital obsolescence is astounding. For school administrators, they hear the Ed-Tech industrial complex proclaim “You can’t teach tomorrow’s students with today’s technology” and believe they need to junk the devices they just unpacked.
Yes, there is a demand for computer programmers and too few American graduates. Surveys show that the United States only produces about 4.5 percent of the world’s computer science graduates while India graduates 20.7 percent and China turns out 37.3 percent. Based on 2017 data, the Economist predicted the unfilled U.S. jobs in information technology (IT) and computing would surpass one million by 2020, while producing only 56,000 U.S. graduates annually with credentials needed by IT firms. Thus, the U.S. relies on foreign-trained graduates who come to the U.S. under H1B visas, especially from India.
Code.org aspires to grow a new generation of American students, starting in grade school, to fill those future vacancies. But coding languages will continue to evolve. A computer language learned in elementary school will likely be far out-of-date by the time they graduate high school. Therefore advocates switch to the term “computational thinking.”
Computational thinking (CT) is defined as mental skills required to understand a problem and thinking like a computer scientist to pose the problem in a way a computer could potentially solve it. This does not require a computer and is not coding. It is just a format for critical thinking, alluding to a three-step thinking process supposedly related to computing: 1) gather a dataset, 2) identify patterns, and 3) break down the information into likely trends and disregard outliers.
There are certainly good reasons to learn word processing, EXCEL and other programs specific to future work. But those are not coding nor CT, and they too will rapidly evolve, requiring on-the-job re-training.
At the December Kansas State Board of Education meeting, it was proposed that computer literacy be incorporated into the K–12 curriculum. Furthermore, in high school a computer course would substitute for either a math or science graduation requirement. However, most current computer courses are taught by business teachers. This issue will be voted on at their January 2020 meeting.
Unfortunately, O.E.C.D. data show the U.S. is lagging even further behind in science, technology, engineering and math fields. Based on the percentage of college graduates in those fields, South Korea tops the list, followed by Germany, Sweden, Finland, France and 33 others. The United States ranks at 39. Replace one of our minimal science and math courses with a CT course and America can fall even further behind.