Why Schools Should Educate for Citizenship

Within the past decade or so we have witnessed something remarkable in education — the rise and fall of a fad we were promised would revolutionize K–12 education. In the 2010s, tech moguls and others began pushing schools to teach students coding skills, often at the expense of other topics. In 2013, Code.org launched with the claim that every student should learn to code. States began promoting computer science as a core subject. By 2016, President Obama put his weight behind the movement with the Computer Science for All initiative.

Fast-forward to today, and the experts now tell us students may no longer need those once-prized coding skills. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has said the rise of artificial intelligence is making programming skills less relevant. In a leaked memo, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman reportedly stated that AI would likely replace most software engineers. Most recently, entrepreneur and former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya echoed these claims: “The engineer’s role will be supervisory, at best, within 18 months.”

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About the Author

James V. Shuls

James V. Shuls is the head of K–12 Education Reform at the Institute for Governance and Civics at Florida State University.

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Within the past decade or so we have witnessed something remarkable in education — the rise and fall of a fad we were promised would revolutionize K–12 education. In the 2010s, tech moguls and others began pushing schools to teach students coding skills, often at the expense of other topics. In 2013, Code.org launched with the claim that every student should learn to code. States began promoting computer science as a core subject. By 2016, President Obama put his weight behind the movement with the Computer Science for All initiative.

Fast-forward to today, and the experts now tell us students may no longer need those once-prized coding skills. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has said the rise of artificial intelligence is making programming skills less relevant. In a leaked memo, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman reportedly stated that AI would likely replace most software engineers. Most recently, entrepreneur and former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya echoed these claims: “The engineer’s role will be supervisory, at best, within 18 months.”