• SuperCyan
    +3

    I understand the benefits that programming brings, but the article seemed to equate digital literacy to programming, and that's what I didn't really like.

    I think before we should make programming mandatory, we should be teaching kids how to browse the internet safely and give them a bit of knowledge about how more of the bigger things work (I've had classmates not understand the difference between the network drive and C: drive) first. The first thing we should focus on is getting those classes created and revamping our current digital literacy classes. The one at my high school is Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and some typing exercises. I have no clue how using an office suite is considered "digital literacy." It's like making the test to get your driver's license driving from one side of a parking lot to the other, without turning. That's one thing you can do, but there's so many other things you need to learn to drive. The current classes need to cut Power Point and Excel time in exchange for things that actually matter in life.

    Like you said, programming is 21st century mathematics. Personally, I think it should be a math class, either as a higher level class on the level of calculus, or integrated into low-level algebra as a means of showing how to follow concrete instructions and how to process that kind of information. I agree with you in the fact that it's important for most people to at least have a basic understanding of, but it's not digital literacy - which should have a different scope than it already has.

    • fractal
      +5

      I get your point and fully agree, but it's much easier to teach kids excel and powerpoint than programming. I am not defending it, it's just the way things are and public education targets the minimum-common denominator. Now I do prefer to have mandatory programming and have a 25% of kids having a grasp of what is it than none of them until later in their learning career or never, which is probably what is happening right now with mathematics (https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014024rev.pdf). Also, you are going to be hard pressed to find teachers literate in digital literacy, and I am afraid that it's only going to get worse because of the widespread use of mobile platforms, which in my opinion dummyfies the user.