What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

I can't see programming education faring better, especially considering that the emphasis is on "code". This is a horrible thing to put at the forefront, because it limits your view to the particular set of language constructs you use as opposed to broader properties of computer systems and computation. It is best to start by a rundown of high-level computer architecture (von Neumann and Harvard) so as to understand basic machine instructions and types, progressing into OS fundamentals (something like The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System, though condensed), then briefly into compiler construction and language VMs, onto practical usage of a CLI shell, the various ways of representing resources and IPC, data structures and how to use them in forming basic services (like a message/event broker bus or publish-subscribe with named pipes and the file system under a standard interface/toolkit), build systems and so forth. Ideas and concepts with code on the side.

Obviously these are rushed examples, but the point is that code-centric computing education in public schools will probably backfire by creating people with just enough knowledge to have extremely warped views of software. Unless your goal is to turn kids into ALGOL monkeys who can't see beyond the mnemonics, I suppose.

You might say this would be too complex for public schools to implement. I agree, which is why it should stay out. Do it right or don't at all. Bashing out Java code alone is nowhere near as relevant as some people seem to think it is.

There is this huge realization that computers and by extension reality does not care about what's in your head only what is. You can argue that Math has similar levels of precision, but once people start getting partial credit some of that harshness is lost.

That said, I don't think school should overly focus on directly useful skills or even what people studied in the past. How many lifetimes of highschool sudents where wasted learning how to identify and name Regular Polyhedra?

In a world where very few know how some ubiquitous technology works, it's easy and cheap for some corp or govt to get a monopoly on that knowledge (just hire everyone). And with a monopoly on it, you can modify it to your liking and suddenly we're in a dystopian novel and nobody knows about it.

Yes, yes, tinfoil and all that. It's theoretical, but is it really that far off?

Today we have enough technology that an engineer can build a soldier or a merchant (or a farmer or a sailor). We are all familiar with drones and vending machines.

It is important that an engineer not constrain his thinking though. Neither of these replacements does everything a human can do. Sometimes a soldier takes a bullet for a civilian and sometimes a merchant haggles and gives discounts to needy.

Even though these replacements are not perfect they still compete with humans for jobs. We are still a long way from creating a robot engineer. If you want a job that won't be replaced quickly think like an engineer.

We are also closer than ever but still a long way from having a robot doctor or lawyer and will likely be requiring humans for anything resembling a bedside manner or sympathy. Hopefully there will be jobs alongside these artificial replacements for human experts for some time.