Sioux Falls students as early as Kindergarten will be introduced to a computer curriculum, according to KDLT TV.

In an era where a college education is encouraged by schools, learning important skill-sets at a young age can be very beneficial. But how about Kindergarten? That’s the age some kids in Sioux Falls will soon be learning computer science.

Jason Whiting, who is an ICU teacher at Patrick Henry Middle School, said,

The entire school is going to be immersed in computer science. The focus for the computer language is Java. So once they get to 4th and 5th grade, they will be programming in Java.

Whiting said Kindergartners through third grades will learn a lot of the critical thinking skills that go with computer programming. But some may ask, “What is coding?”

Will Bushee, who is the Co-Founder of Code Bootcamp told us, “So everything you do with computers has to be programmed. So everything with web pages, or back end or like your banking website or any of the programs that you use, somebody needs to go in and tell the computer how to make the things work.”

But, the benefits don’t stop there.

“Computer programming itself, while there are a bunch of languages, the critical thinking, the problem solving that goes behind it is a skill that every person can use in very aspect of their life,” said Whiting.

Learning computer science at young ages can steer people away from the stigma that you have to go to college when you graduate high school. Whiting says if you have the certifications needed, then you are as employable as anybody else.

“All careers now have something to do with coding whether it’s the medical field, or a banking field, or business field , pretty much everything has something to do with programming,” said Bushee.


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