I'm stealing that headline from Douglas Rushkoff's latest book, which I heard about on BBC Outriders. And I just wanted to post quickly about how I agree with the concept (I haven't actually read the book, so....)
Basically he says that kids should be taught programming in school, probably at secondary school level. This would mean that people would be much more aware about basic computing issues, something that affects us everyday. If you understand a little about how Facebook works, then you can learn a little about how to protect yourself. Computing has become so ubiquitous that not learning how to actually make programs is like learning how to read but not write.
This was brought home to me by Mozilla Drumbeat presentation on the state of IT education in the UK. Basically some parts of the curriculum are plain wrong, and some parts are 10 years out of date. According to the curriculum kids should be making web pages on Microsoft Word and Powerpoint, a completely laughable idea. Also it has somehow missed the web's move towards a semantic web, by about 10 years!
It's no wonder that I can walk into a Computing degree with no previous experience - so I've benefited quite a lot from this! The problem is that we're going to fall behind, if all we're doing is teaching kids how to be obedient, unimaginative office drones.
So I propose that we start teaching kids how to make stuff on computers, not just spending masses of money on buying computers.
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