Interesting read from The Atlantic on the government’s proposed STEM education initiative.
Megan Smith said that in addition to funding computer-science education, the White House initiative would disseminate recent research on how different students learn coding and computing. “One child might be more interested in earth science, one child might be more interested in gaming, one might be interested in social justice,” she said.
The initiative would also encourage states to begin offering computer-science education to younger students, “so that kids don’t have the stereotypes already built in that much of our society delivers to them.” To that effect, she said popular depictions of computer science could use an update to tell a fuller story of who codes. She noted that Obama’s State of the Union Speech this year included a nod to Grace Hopper, a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy who’s credited with inventing the first user-friendly computer language.
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