The importance of teaching coding at a younger age

Jathan Sadowski writes on WIRED.com about how pushing people to code will widen the divide between the rich and poor.

For instance, the burden of adding coding to curricula ignores the fact that the English literacy rate in America is still abysmal: 45 million U.S. adults are “functionally illiterate” and “read below a 5th grade level,” according to data gathered by the Literacy Project Foundation. Almost half of all Americans read “so poorly that they are unable to perform simple tasks such as reading prescription drug labels.” The reading proficiency of Americans is much lower than most other developed countries, and it’s declining.

I don’t agree with Sadowski about how literacy and the ability to code should be lumped together when considering the school curriculum. Just because a person is illiterate doesn’t mean that they are precluded from learning programming.

Teaching children how to code will instil in them problem-solving skills and logical thinking. More importantly, it will eventually become essential for our children to be able to read and write code. Software is changing the world. Technology has become an integral part of our lives. We need to be able to understand how technology works.