At the Internet of Things World Forum, held in Chicago from October 14-16th, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that in three years taking a computer science course will be mandatory to graduate from high school in Chicago.

This makes sense since Computer Science is one of the higher paying degrees, but fewer students each year are majoring in this subject. While requiring all students to take Computer Science may be a waste of time and money,  many proponents claim that learning coding increases critical thinking skills. Considering that introductory courses focus only on syntax, rather than on deeper ideas, it’s unclear if many students will decide to continue with advanced courses. For those students that do not, they will eventually forget that which they have learned.

It’s also unknown if coding helps students not majoring in a computer science field. Computer literacy is certainly necessary, but coding is not. Coding is a narrow subject which most people don’t deal with regularly. While the intention is good, the effort could be better spent elsewhere. Rather than focusing solely on Computer Science, bolstering science and math education would help all STEM fields.

Written by Dimitri Vasikov’15