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"Eventually, programming itself will become more important even than mathematics in early education."
- Marvin Minsky, 1970 Turing Award Lecture

According to the Princeton Review, Computer Science now ranks among the top 10 most popular undergraduate majors, among more traditional favorites including English, Education, and Psychology. For the most part, students approaching a major on this list have already approached its content material in some significant way before reaching college. English majors generally have twelve years of English language and literature coursework under their belts before starting their college coursework; biology majors have approached the biological sciences not only in an introductory high school course but also in life science explorations throught their elementary and middle school educations. Contrastingly, more often than not computer science majors come in with little to no experience in their prospective major. For many, the introductory class taken freshman year of college is the first time they have approached programming concepts in any formal or informal way.

From this standpoint, it comes as no surprise that computer science has a hard time garnering and maintaining student interest, especially among students who are statistically less likely to be interested in the field to begin with. Thus, it clearly is necessary to introduce students to programming and computer science before they reach the university level.

By the time students reach high school, however, many already have decided on a general area of interest or study. For this reason, we propose that computer science education be integrated into early primary school curriculum, starting as soon as the first grade and developing through high school and beyond.

On this website, teachers, parents, administrators, and other individuals involved in the early education process will find material related to early computer science education, including curriculum reviews, sample lesson plans, and explanations of the benefits of early programming education.


Early Acquisition of Computer Science · ©2008 Justin Solomon and Peter Rusev