Yep, that why I said I supported the availability of the courses. My high school had none, as in 0, optional or not. My scepticism is around forcing kids to do things they are not interested in and the beneficial outcomes thereof. I took a lot of required classes in high school that I did not pay any attention in and could tell you basically nothing about them today. I think tech folks have a hard time understanding people's ambivalence around programming. I have a friend who is a geologist, spends his day, to the best of my understanding, studying rocks. That sounds terribly boring to me, but then again I am not a geologist, and my job probably sounds terribly boring to him. Forcing me to take that class in high school is unlikely to have changed that or given me much more of an appreciation of it.
So no compulsory classes at all in school? How is one to find out which subjects are stimulating and which are not without some introduction to them?
Whilst rocks are fascinating to some, I'm not sure the analogy holds as rocks are not (more than they ever have been before) becoming a part of everyone's everyday life.
If we were living in the stone ages I would be arguing for compulsory intro-to-rocks courses :)
