Monday, March 03, 2014
“I am fluent in over six million forms of communication …”
In Kentucky, students may be able to learn coding instead of a foreign language.
Legislation in the Kentucky Senate would let students use computer programming courses to satisfy foreign-language requirements.
The bill passed the Senate Education Committee on a 10-1 vote last week in a move forward.
Kentucky Coding: Foreign Language Requirement in Schools May be Satisfied with Computer Programming
This is not as crazy as it sounds. My friend Wlofie (who lives in Sweden) considered me multilingual even if I didn't think so, because I knew multiple computer languages (various assembly languages, C, Lua, some Pascal, Fortran, Perl, Lisp, Forth and Erlang, plus having written my own back in college) even if I only spoke one language (English). This, from a guy who spoke at least four languages fluently.
Sigh. Why not twenty-five years ago? I could have saved myself years of anguish attempting to learn German (really? six different forms of the article the?) had this been the case when I was in school.
Then again, I would have missed out on a teacher that sent students on daily donut runs …