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President Barack Obama says he'll ask Congress for billions in new spending to help students learn computer science skills.

This doesn't require billions in new spending. All it requires is using the billions already being spent to give students a decent underpinning in basic mathematics and science. That combined with an aptitude for logical thinking and a passion for software will take care of the rest - it was good enough to produce people like Don Knuth as well as Kernighan and Ritchie. I doubt billions in new spending are going to produce anyone who contributes that much.

This doesn't require billions in new spending.

My kids, who went to primary and secondary schools between 1992 and 2010, learned that we were destroying tropical rain forests, and when all of the biodiversity in the world was destroyed by greedy corporations in the Amazon Basin and other exotic third world jungles, that would pretty much be the end of the world.

I'm sure no money was specifically earmarked for that, but I have no doubt it cost billions. This is what they learned instead of actual science until they got to middle school.

Today, I'm sure that billions -- again not specifically earmarked, but no doubt in the lesson plans of thousands of educators -- is being spent to indoctrinate kids on the evils of carbon, AGW, and all the rest.

$4 billion could easily be diverted from the non-science primary schools spend teaching claptrap. The problem is, who would teach it? I doubt that more than a handful of primary or secondary teachers could possibly teach computer science in any serious way. [High School math teachers surely could, but math education is already lacking enough...]