[brighteyes]

> People are intelligent in many different ways and I don't believe that most people have the abstract thinking skills necessary to really thrive in computer science.

Isn't the same true of math, which we already teach in schools extensively?

[douche]

The majority of people flail away and struggle to get through the three years of high-school level math they are typically required to take, which usually tops out at some kind of trig/pre-calculus level - which is just about what you'd need to know to be a carpenter who could figure angles and lengths without relying solely on rules-of-thumb. Maybe they take a softball stats class their senior year.

Evidence would suggest that most people don't really have the abstract thinking skills necessary to do math either.

[brighteyes]

Maybe they don't, in a way, but are you sure they still don't benefit from it, even if they find it hard and even if they only reach a pre-calculus level?

[noir_lord]

I think the primary benefit of teaching everyone comp-sci is to expose people to it who would have loved but may not have had the oppurtunity.

I've got a couple of friends my age (35) who got into programming in the last few years and absolutely love it, they didn't get into it when they where younger because they didn't have access to the machines (mostly a matter of your background, even the "cheap" home computers in the 80's where not cheap, I was lucky, my parents were not wealthy but my dad had an interest in computers so we had one from 87 onwards nothing spectacular I was still using a 386 in the late 90's, didn't get on windows until ~2000 by which point I was already a Linux user)

[cdcarter]

> I think the primary benefit of teaching everyone comp-sci is to expose people to it who would have loved but may not have had the oppurtunity.

Honestly, I think the primary benefit of teaching everyone comp-sci is so that when they have to experience complicated systems, they have a great set of mental tools with which to model them. Same benefit from learning basic logic in school maths.

[eli_gottlieb]

That's a very small, unambitious value of the word "extensively".

[rconti]

More than music, foreign languages, chemistry, physics....

"English" and "math" are the two things you'll be taking constantly in middle school and high school.

[jessaustin]

Have they finally gotten rid of "American History"? Thank Goodness.

[ams6110]

US History is typically one year in high school. Maybe with another semester specifically on US Government (what used to be called "civics" I guess).