Read the passage below and check your comprehension by answering the following questions. Then “submit” your work.
There is a large contingent of educators and parents who think the key to securing a good-paying job after college lies with learning a foreign language. Envisioning a future in which China leads the world’s economy, they push school boards to teach Mandarin or enroll their children in extracurricular immersion courses (McDonald, 2012). But what if there were another language just as likely to lead to fruitful employment, one that applied to just about every existing and emerging industry that not only could be taught in schools but also learned at home for little cost? And what if that language, already in use around the world, was based primarily on English?
That language—well, technically, those languages, since there are many—is computer code. Code essentially refers to the directions given to a computer to make it do what you want it to do. The apps you use to play games on your phone, the programs that issue your credit card bill each month, the tools that small businesses use to manage supply chains and payroll, even the sensor that dings in your car when you forget to buckle up, all run on code. In every industry, from information tech to communications, manufacturing to agriculture, and food service to shipping, computers and code play a role. The most popular computer languages (like Ruby, Python, and C++) are “spoken” in just about every technologically advanced country, even though these languages are, by and large, based on English language keywords. Coding is not just for engineers or engineering majors. It is a skill that will benefit anyone in just about any job. Huffington Post CTO John Pavley points out that even for nontech types, coding can open doors to satisfying work. “[N]on-technical people can learn to code, which will open doors to better jobs and a richer understanding of the rapidly changing world around us” (Pavley, 2013).
Pavley likens the divide between those who can and cannot code to the low levels of literacy during the Dark Ages, when the written word, along with the power it conferred, was the provenance of only a small elite. Some even suggest making learning code an educational requirement along the lines of, or even in place of, a foreign language (Koerner, 2013). Multilingual education may take on a whole new meaning.