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Absolutely. Broadly, I wonder what leads to schools not adopting emerging fields as part of the formal curriculum. Interesting to note even in 2021, only 51% US k12 high schools were found to have a CS course. Does not seem like a capital problem to me. Is this just inertia or a legibility problem?


I'm inclined to say it's mostly inertia.

As with any monopoly, the incentives for public school administrators are all out of wack. Adding a CS curricula takes real time and effort (lost summer vacation time, effort required to convince the board/PTA, picking a curriculum, hiring teachers for an unfamiliar topic). It brings with it real risks and headaches (budget issues, vulnerability/ignorance in a new domain, possible failure/embarrassment, board/PTA conflict, dissatisfied students/parents). Meanwhile the benefits are not tangible and the cost of not implementing a new CS curriculum is zero.

For public school administrators (as with all process owners) it's far easier to simply repeat what they did last year.


Oof yeah. The legibility-gained per effort put in for most admins working in a system that inherently incentivises tangibility and observable "utility" (whatever that may be in this case) reduces any hope of seeing much change.

Maybe this is another good problem that Systems Sciences might hold a great explanation too :-O.

Thanks!


Who will teach them?




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