Code for mandate? Lawmaker says no

Regional News

Audio By Carbonatix

One hour of coding instruction is not going to teach anyone to create the next generation of Minecraft.

But Sen. John Kavanagh figures that if students are exposed to understanding code and what it can do, then a handful will be encourage to want to know more.

So the Scottsdale Republican convinced the House Education Committee to vote 7-4 on Monday to require students to be exposed to just one hour of coding sometime between grades 4 and 12. SB 1136, which already has cleared the Senate on a 17-13 margin, now needs approval of the full House.

Kavanagh said he became inspired to push the legislation after a trip to Silicon Valley where he and other lawmakers met with some the major players there including Google and Facebook.

“One of the things they kept driving into us legislators was that they have to import hundreds of students from outside the U.S.,” he said.

“There are not enough American students that have coding skills,” Kavanagh continued. “They would really like to have American-grown talent doing this work here.”

So how much can a student learn in one hour?

Not much,” Kavanagh conceded. But he said that’s not the point.