newly ancient

As I was reviewing my schedule for my freshmen year of high school, I was particularly interested in what languages I was taking. Though I signed up for French and Latin, French is the only language I will apparently be able to take. Through this thinking, I thought of the fact that we really should be expanding language programming into new directions. Instead of simply teaching traditional romance languages, schools should expand teachings into the fields of computers. Instead of keeping programming and computer education in a few AP classes, programming should be given equal emphasis as foreign languages. Just like foreign languages in most schools, programming would not be required but would be recommended. In fact, the ability to program is going to become far more useful than the ability to speak a foreign language. As translation software becomes more and more robust, the ability to speak a foreign language becomes less and less useful. Meanwhile, as the presence of computers increases, the ability to communicate effectively with machines becomes more useful. I don’t mean high level programming, I mean simple programming. The ability to run through a list and change one value, the ability to modify a database, and such simple tasks are increasingly useful and even expected in many fields. In light of this, programming should be recognized as a vital part of a high school curriculum.