Software has touched every field of human endeavor and use of internet has become widespread in the last 25 years.  The field Computer Science and Programming which was once thought of as a useful tool that supports various core subjects of science, mathematics and engineering but has now emerged as core subject on its own.  Yet, Computer Science Education has largely remained the domain of higher education in colleges and universities and has not touched K-12 education.  Recent developments are very encouraging and USA educators are saying “This CS education imperative has dovetailed with the science policy attention to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning in the United States since the turn of the 21st century. With Computational Thinking being viewed as at the core of all STEM disciplines”.

Jeannette Wing, Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, said “It represents a universally applicable attitude and skill set everyone, not just computer scientists, would be eager to learn and use”.  Steve Jobs in The Lost Interview said “I think everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think.”

The Royal Society’s report in Jan 2012 said “the role of Computer Science as? a discipline itself and as an ‘underpinning’ subject across science and engineering is growing rapidly.  It is becoming increasingly clear that studying Computer Science provides a ‘way of thinking’ in the same way that mathematics does, and that there are therefore strong educational arguments for taking a careful look at how and when we introduce young people to the subject and ensure that the next generation of young people in this country can be creators of technology – not just consumers of it.”.  This report distinguishes between digital literacy, using of computers in schools by teachers and students for course work and emphasizes the need for computer science education.

The attention that CS Education in K-12 is receiving in USA and UK is echoed in Germany as per a recent article in Spiegel Online, which says, “Education experts in Germany are pushing to modernize the country’s basic curriculum by making instruction in computer science mandatory.”  There many voices from the academia and the industry which are says that the 3Rs of education (Reading, wRiting and aRithmatic) should now be made 4Rs of education by including algoRithms through Computer Science as a formal part of K-12 education.

In India, CBSE and ICSE have introduced formal computer science curriculum from IX grade onwards and in XI and XII grades as an elective.  Whereas, in a laudable initiative of the Computer Science Department in IIT, Bombay, has introduced CS curriculum in the local schools in Mumbai and consulted educators to develop a Model Computer Science Curriculum for?Schools in March, 2010 covering elementary schools to high schools and released the same under Creative Commons license.

While the advantages of introducing CS education in K-12 are compelling, the task itself is daunting when it comes to Training the Subject Teachers, Class Teachers and School Administrators. Parents and Schools in our already overburdened educational system can either choose to wait or take the initiative by using free online resources like Scratch from MIT, Alice Programming from Carnegie Mellon, Java Script, Python and Ruby Programming from Code Academy or online CS courses from eimacs.com, udacity.org , coursera.org and edx.org .  Kids are smart enough to figure out what is appropriate for them from a learning perspective and need just the facilitation from Parents and Teachers or their involvement as co-learners.

References :

1)Computational Thinking in K−12: A Review of the State of the Field , Shuchi Grover and Roy Pea?EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER 2013 42: 38?.

2)Shut Down or Restart :  The way forward for computing in UK schools, Royal Society report on CS education in UK, Jan 2012.

3)Model Computer Science Curriculum for Schools, Sridhar Iyer, Malathy Baru, Vijayalakshmi Chitta, Farida Khan, and Usha Vishwanathan, ?Department of Computer Science and Engineering, ?Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, March, 2010

4)Reading, Writing, Algorithms: Should IT Classes Be Required? Hilmar Schmundt , Spiegel Online International, May 16, 2013

5)Wing, J. (2006). Computational thinking. Communications of the ACM, 49(3), 33–36.

6)Henderson, P. B., Cortina, T. J., Hazzan, O., and Wing, J. M. (2007) Computational Thinking. In Proceedings of the 38th ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ’07), 195–196. New York, NY: ACM Press.