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In contrast, when Obama released his Computer Science for All initiative, the strategy included details on plans to encourage more girls and students from underrepresented groups to consider computer science, investment in after-school programs, and more. This is above and beyond their already extensive commitment to invest in multi-year multi-pronged approaches for teacher training and support.

Chicago’s CS4All plan smartly outlines comprehensive tactics to create a pathway to computer science from grade school to postsecondary, yielding results that tripled high school computer science course enrolment in just its first year of implementation. Unlike other jurisdictions, the Clark government has failed to address some of the core systemic issues in computer science education by missing key opportunities such as recognizing secondary computer science courses for post-secondary admissions. Instead of learning from other jurisdictions’ successes and failures to use this opportunity to show true leadership in education, this government has elected to boast about an alternative fact that they are the first jurisdiction to mandate coding education in North America.

If the Clark government is genuinely interested in training the next generation, restructuring B.C.’s economy to be resourceful, and introducing new skills to the workforce for us to be globally competitive, it is crucial for us to have a long-game strategy for computer science education, and not simply bold statements for pre-election optics on vote-friendly issues. Rolling out K-12 coding education is not about taking credit for alternative facts on who did it first, but instead requires thoughtful and thorough planning so that every student has the opportunity to try and succeed. In the age of political post-truths, British Columbians need to be even more critical about the merits of our government’s promises for the future, like this one, as we head to the polls this May.

Melody Ma is a Vancouver-based web developer and software product manager. She is a kids coding advocate and volunteer who led the 2015 B.C. Hour of Code campaign, in addition to creating the B.C.-wide youth coding event, Codecreate, with support from the B.C. government.

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