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Marcos Castelan

Professor Parker

ENGL 1302

10 June 2018

Computer Science in K-12

The issue of not having computer science programs in high schools is beginning to

become a real problem. As our technology advances more and more each day, we will need more

and more people to learn how to work and keep up with the modern technology. Now why not

everyone is interested in this sort of career having knowledge about the field might help those

who want to are not sure about a future career find something they like in computer science. Our

technological advances are getting so demanding that we need to try and find people who have a

passion for the art at an early age so that when they go to college they have a leg up on someone

who may have come from another country and comes with knowledge. This field is expanding

quickly and keeps on getting updated that having some knowledge prior to going to college will

help students by up to date with new advances in the field and are not falling behind in their

classes or studies.

For all of history we can find evidence of humans evolving and becoming smarter and

creating new technology maybe not the same as coding, but it does show that we want to learn

new things and change. Computers science is becoming more and more of a demanding field

with everything that we own now a day being a smart product of some sort, from our tv’s to our

cell phones modern technology keeps advancing and we must advance with it. Computer science

is becoming such an important field in our world today because everything needs a proper code
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to work correctly, in these days it is not a rare thing to see a programable coffee maker that could

have coffee ready for you as soon as you get out of bed in the morning.

We need to have more people who are interested in a career in the computer science field

so that when some new product is made there are people available to break off from a project and

be able to code this product correctly. Being able to teach kids at a very young age to code will

help grow this field even bigger and bigger. Watching movies with a futuristic setting where they

have flying cars and crazy tech at their disposable is only possible in theory, but unless there is

someone there that can code those types of devices and bring them to life. Being able to get

schools to involve coding as part of the core curriculum taught to students will help expand their

options once they are ready to head off to college. “No other subject will open as many doors in

the 21st century, regardless of a student’s ultimate field of study or occupation, as computer

science” (Martin). Being able to expand your options and open doors is a very good reason to

have computer science classes in schools before kids head off to college. Not only will this help

them pick a major, but it could keep students from switching majors and making their college

career longer than it should be.

“Computing and technology occupations continue to be among the highest-paying and

fastest-growing occupations, growing twice as fast as the average rate for all fields. Recent

technological advances driving the state and national economy across many industries can be

linked to the field of computer science. Economic projections indicate that there will be more

than 1.3 million job openings in computing and mathematical occupations by 2022” (Martin).

With so many jobs that are to become available in such an expanding field. It makes sense to

teach kids at an early age to be able to fill all the new up and coming opportunities. As we

continue to grow and expand this field of work more jobs will keep coming and might even help
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with unemployment rates and even with homelessness. Now while not everyone will have

knowledge in this field it will let people who do and are working low income jobs move forward

and open those jobs for other people. While not all students might not be interested in this field

given them the knowledge and skill could come in handy to them in the future. “Many teachers

have a perception that CS is difficult and requires extensive, expensive training. Hour of Code

activities can help change that” (Guzdail). Teachers will be hard to find not only do they believe

that learning how to code is difficult but once they learn it most of them try to leave and go

explore this new world that they were just introduced too.
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Work(s) Cited

Guzdial, Mark. "Bringing Computer Science to U.S. Schools, State by State." Communications

of the ACM, vol. 59, no. 5, May 2016, pp. 24-25. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1145/2898963.

Martin, Alexis, et al. Path Not Found: Disparities in Access to Computer Science Courses in

California High Schools. Online Submission, Online Submission, 01 May 2015.

EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=ED561181&site=ehost-live.