Should We Still Teach Coding in Schools?

The real question isn't whether AI will replace coding—it's whether you're leading a school or managing a manpower pipeline.

The rush to abandon coding instruction reveals something uncomfortable: many districts adopted it not because they understood its transformative potential, but because "there are jobs there." Now, as AI automation threatens those same jobs, the panic to drop coding exposes the poverty of that original vision. You chased a trend. Now you want to chase the next one.

This pattern—adopt the skill, chase the market, panic when the market shifts—is precisely why schools struggle to remain relevant. You're trapped in reactive mode, always one disruption behind, because you're asking the wrong question.

Coding was never about producing programmers. It's about developing minds capable of:

• Decomposing complex problems into solvable parts
• Building tolerance for productive failure
• Thinking in systems and logic
• Creating, not just consuming, technology

These capacities don't vanish because ChatGPT writes better Python than your students. They become more essential.

The real challenge? Teaching coding well is hard. Finding teachers who can do it is harder. And confronting the deeper truth—that your system was built for compliance, not innovation—is hardest of all.

So ask yourself: Are you preparing students to be empowered creators of their future, or efficient servants of someone else's?

The choice reveals what you truly believe education is for.