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- Embed this notice@evan qualified no for: I don't particularly like the idea that "everyone should" for any kind of specialist knowledge. knowing a thing or two about programming has definitely helped me immensely, but it's easy to project onto others; I don't know how I would function without my programming knowledge. but other people are not me! when I was younger, I used to think that everyone should have a higher level understanding of math, enough basic literacy to understand high school calculus at least. but it turns out I just didn't realize at the time that I have autism, and my brain being wired to take so much interest in math isn't something other people need to emulate
but given our societal context, I'd like to see a lot more computer literacy taught at the elementary school level so it's common knowledge for adults. it should be a unit in say, sixth grade science classes. not everyone is a microbiologist, but just about everyone remembers that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell and knows that cells are things that your body is made of that are alive and reproduce. similarly, what if sixth graders got a passing knowledge in how computers and the internet works?
I don't think they need to learn HOW a server works or different web protocols, but it'd be nice if people knew what it means when a computer connects to the internet. I think I should be able to ask a person on the street what happens when you type a website into an address bar, and about as often as a person can tell me the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, they should be able to tell me that it resolves the hostname and connects to another machine somewhere, where it asks for the resource. a decent amount of people should be able to break down a URI; if I ask them which part is the protocol or the path name, they should be able to point to it. I think this could do a lot for giving people a little more context to understand internet privacy and security, which I think a lot of folks don't have a good understanding of.
I would also have those kids get taught a little programming; nothing close to the current courses that high schoolers can take. just have them write a BASIC hello world program, or something that adds two numbers. not knowing "how to program," but internalizing in a general sense that computers take instruction sets and execute them.