Allocating resources to teach coding will take away from teaching the fundamentals ... hence leading to worse outcomes and greater inequality.
Something about that argument doesn't sit right with me. It doesn't seem like the answer is to say 'we can't teach literacy well, therefore we shouldn't teach coding'. Seems like a better answer is 'fix how we teach literacy'.
Anything with a GUI? Ok there's all your principals of design to chuck in. Geometry, proportions or what have you can't be ignored so hello maths already.
It might not be a fundamental application but its skill set certainly is.
it just seemed like the 'income inequality' is an orthogonal issue.
A headline of 'Fix fundamentals first' or 'You need fundamentals before you can teach coding' would have made more sense to me.
with that said, for me, coding is actually a huge motivator for learning. You can actually see why you need to linear algebra, calculus, statistics, trigonometry, etcc. Instead of some abstract purpose you can very concretely that you need to master all those topics if you want to make a robot function ... for example.