Computer science class considered as required in NC high schools

I'm not a huge fan of public schools because I think they have their heads up their asses for the most part and this is unavoidable since they are totally bogged down in red tape, paperwork, legislation, and all manner of other stuff. This is true with anything that the government gets their dirty little mitts on. Every now and then though, someone comes along and proposes something that is somewhat sensible and lately here in North Carolina some elected officials are calling for a computer science class to become one of the required classes necessary in order to graduate high school.

It would be right up there with being able to read, do math, have a bit of know how with science, and of course a bunch of propaganda that we have to listen to every year from the age of 6 about how America is the greatest country in the world and has never done anything wrong (history class.)

I feel as though most of what I was required to learn in high school had absolutely no bearing on anything that I ended up doing for work in my life, but I would actually like to see something like this pass, or at least become something of an elective in public schools.

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I grew up in a different time and computers had almost nothing to do with my education and it wasn't until I was in college that they were really part of my classwork and even then it was more of just a device to serve as an intermediary to the printer. We didn't really learn much about how to use them outside of an "Intro to computers" class that everyone had to take as a freshman. This class was absurd and a vast majority of the people in the class knew more about the technology than the teacher did. This can be attributed to the fact that I went to high school in the early 90's and college in the mid 90's. Computers were becoming more and more a part of our daily lives but they were nowhere near as all encompassing like they are today.

These days, I think that taking a computer science class would be a pretty great addition to the curriculum even if the entire system is deeply flawed. Just because something is terribly broken doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve it.

We could even discover that there are kids in these classes that are very good at it. I know that the most successful people I know that work in computer science or in programming of some sort, didn't even learn any of these things in school mostly because it wasn't an option.

Of course, making it required could end up going terribly wrong because there is always the very real chance that the school systems don't actually have a competent instructor. Even with the few classes I took in college that were CS related, the teachers seemed to be washed-up professors who couldn't make it in the professional world and an old saying comes to mind: "if you can do, then do. If you can't, teach."

In order to accommodate this addition of another required class, it has been suggested that the number of required sciences be reduced from 3 to 2. Some have suggested that earth science be removed.

Personally I recall being in 3 science classes in high school. I was in biology, chemistry, and physics. Other than physics, I don't really believe that any of this had any bearing on my, or anyone else's professional development. Other than a picture of mitochondria or the parts of a plant, I don't even remember much of what happened in these classes at all.

I'm not saying that science isn't important because it definitely is. What I am trying to say that if school has one objective, it probably should be giving people useful skills that they will actually have a chance to use in the real world. What is more relevant to today's times than Computer Science?

All the people out there saying "learn to code" have been quite arrogant about this in the past but now at least there is an opportunity to give kids at least a basic building block with which to build upon. Some of these kids might not have even known before this class that they actually do have some interest in it and I think it could be a good idea... or at least a not terrible one which is what I have come to expect from all legislation not just in North Carolina, but really anywhere else.

If this bill fails, I hope that it at least generates enough interest to make the class an elective. However, this won't really change the fact that most high schools probably don't actually have a teacher that is capable of teaching this subject. But that is another matter entirely.