Btw, ponus points for (in the context of this article) implying that Black and Hispanic children aren't smart enough to be software engineers.
Let's not have populists plant the seeds that all it takes is government handouts (and also wave the carrot of future career ROI in front of people who don't know better) though.
This is at best misdirection and manipulation by corrupt demagogues who know nothing about software or engineering. Unless of course there are others, besides hack job politicians, who are putting forth the same views?
The criticism this article is levying is how it is threatening to produce code monkeys instead of well-rounded software engineers. But that is because (I believe) that they are suggesting "programming" credits could be used in lieu of math/science credits to graduate. Which would create high school graduate who can program tolerably but have little to no skill doing anything else... aka a vocational training.
The criticisms aren't "Well they won't be any good at it anyways."
You're also making a very strong elitist stance on the matter. The tone of your comments strongly imply "software engineers are better than other people, only the chosen few may join our illustrious ranks!"
Where you see "attempting to give exposure to programming" I see students being PUSHED by the environment (parents, teachers, peers) into doing something that they may very well not enjoy or be good at, simply because it's been reduced to a good CAREER. Is that something that we need to further encourage?
Moreover, re: exposure to programming, I dare say that we don't need it _at all_ these days since it's everywhere.
Knowing what we know about the American education system (ranked as among one of the worst in the world, every year) I think my interpretation is a lot more realistic than yours.
