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Society is ever-changing. We’ve become more attuned to technology, and this was mentioned in Episode 1 of the Writing Remix Podcast. Professor Stephanie Renée Payne and Dr. Katie Robison talked about how students, specifically the newer generation, have grown up with technology / the internet and are fluent with it.

After hearing this, I couldn’t help but think of an unpopular, maybe controversial, opinion. Could coding (C++, Python, Java, etc.) be a substitute for foreign language credit?

Initially, I was very fond of the idea of coding being normalized as a language used to communicate. It seemed like a sci-fi futuristic world and I liked that idea. Society has become more accepting to gender fluidity and coding could work under the same flexibility. But after looking into it, I learned that it’s probably not the best idea.

This opinion has been debated over back in 2013, where legislators in Florida, Kentucky, New Mexico, and Texas had “introduced legislation that would allow high school students to use computer coding courses to satisfy their state’s foreign language graduation requirement,” (Berdan). Also in this article, it’s pointed out that learning foreign languages “enables them to cross cultural bounds more easily by appreciating and understanding differences and similarities, and develops critical skills of adaptability, empathy, communication and relationship building,” (Berdan). I completely agree with this statement. Coding does not have the culture or history that comes with world language. In foreign languages, there are wonderful nuances of vocal expression that are inapplicable with coding.

Maybe one hundred years from now, society is fluent in code, and people are sending text messages in Python, but I think it’s a very small maybe.

WORKS CITED

Berdan, Stacie. “Computing in the Classroom.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 2014, www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/05/12/teaching-code-in-the-classroom/coding-cant-and-shouldnt-replace-foreign-language-requirements.

Writing Remix Podcast. (2020). Episode 1: Stepping into the Self with Stephanie Renée Payne. USC Writing Program.