Can Kansas Schools Teach Computer Coding Without Eating Up Time For Math And Science?

A teenager wakes up, gets ready for school. Slips a smartphone into her pocket on the way out the door.

Her day may well include some biology or chemistry, history, algebra, English and Spanish. It likely won’t include lessons on how that smartphone — more powerful than the computers aboard the Apollo moon missions — and its myriad colorful apps actually work.

That worries some Kansas businesses, lawmakers and educators who see a disconnect between what students learn and the technologies that have transformed everything from tractors in wheatfields to checkout lines at grocery stores.

But barriers to change abound. Computer wizzes earn more money programming in C++ than teaching it to teens. And cramming computer science into more students’ schedules could cut into time spent learning about evolution, trigonometry or the laws of physics.

Read more: https://www.kcur.org/post/can-kansas-schools-teach-computer-coding-without-eating-time-math-and-science#stream/0