It’s time we made ‘code’ an official language, and teach it in every school:-

“We don’t need to teach kids about technology — they already understand it better than we do!”
That statement, though true in many ways, is at the heart of a serious problem with our education system: We’re failing to equip kids with true tech skills because we assume they’ll develop those skills on their own, or that they already possess them. That’s simply not true. And it’s hurting our kids and ultimately, society as a whole.
Consider this: Gartner estimates that total global IT spending will hit $3.5 trillion this year, while Accenture predicts that the increased use of digital technologies will grow the size of the global GDP by $1.36 trillion in the next 5 years. All of those dollars equal opportunity for the people who are fluent in tech.
But being able to play Crossy Road while Snapchatting and watching your favorite YouTuber does not count. These are the equivalent of being able to stop a VCR’s clock from flashing “12:00”; they might befuddle adults, but they’re not the skills kids need.
So what do kids actually need to build the next generation of technology and land a job? Coding.

Code should be treated as language

In Canada, CEO of BitMaker Labs, Craig Hunter, has decided to try to do something about that country’s code-deficient education. He’s petitioning the government to make “code” the country’s third official language after English and French.

My son, who is about to enter ninth grade at a Toronto district high-school, has never touched a line of code.

Hunter says the idea for the petition came after enduring countless meetings with tech heavyweights and startups alike, all of them complaining about the same thing: They simply can’t find enough programmers to hire. BitMaker Labs runs training programs for those who want to learn the art and science of coding. Hunter — who was employee #52 at Uber before his current gig — calls it “market-based education,” but isn’t worried that his petition could dry up that market any time soon. “We couldn’t possibly graduate 4 million people,” he says, referring to one of the more aggressive estimates of how many open coding jobs there will be by 2020.
Does that sound ludicrous? It shouldn’t. In the U.K., the government has made computing and programming a compulsory part of primary education starting this year. If you think that the primary age is too young, think again: According to a recent study in the U.K., primary age children say they are more interested in learning to code than in learning a second spoken language like French. This interest begins to wane as they get older, making K-8 the perfect time to introduce them to programming.

Where did it go?

It wasn’t always this way. Back when the personal computer was beginning the revolution that we all now take for granted, there was enthusiasm amongst educators to show kids how this stuff works. By the time I turned 13, in 1983 (yup, I’m old) our eight grade class was being taught how to use BASIC on an Apple II to simulate the press-button ordering system at McDonald’s restaurants. We learned the principles of planning, commenting, using sub-routines and even something as simple as leaving lots of room between line numbers in case you needed to insert some more code later.
Thirty years later, my son, who is about to enter ninth grade at a Toronto district high-school, has never touched a line of code. He gets straight As in math, but he thinks code is boring. No one (and I reluctantly include myself in this group) has ever taught him otherwise.