The Atlantic – Natalie Gross
“Spanish. French. German. Computer coding. Are they the same? This question is at the center of a debate in Florida, where legislators are currently considering a bill that would require high schools to offer computer coding as a foreign-language credit…“By 2020, companies across the U.S. will have 1.4 million job openings requiring computer-science expertise and just 400,000 college graduates to fill them,” John Lauerman writes for Bloomberg Business. But, as a source tells Lauerman, monolingual Americans will need to up their game, too…Last December, the Miami-Dade County Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said he “absolutely” disagrees with the idea that computer coding is an equal substitute for a foreign language…“Based on both educational, intellectual development, and emotional development—as well as long-term economic development in an increasingly bilingual and biliterate community—computer coding is not a trade-off,” Carvalho told the Miami Herald.”(more)