ARKANSAWYERS CODE: The Natural State has some urgent, noble reasons for learning how to code. The Arkansas House has unanimously passed a bill which declares an emergency around the lack of coding in schools, promoting programming classes as “immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health and safety.” Due to the bill, every public high school in the state--over 250 schools--will be required to offer computer science courses in the 2015-2016 school year, either in classrooms or online. (Only 24 Arkansas high schools currently do.) The mandatory offerings may not be enough, according to Governor Asa Hutchinson: he has proposed making computer science a core requirement for high school graduation. The bill now is pending in the Senate's Education Committee; stay tuned to see if that groups feels the same anxiety.
