Where's the group pushing "everyone should learn to": be an accountant, doctor, engineer, electrician or a plumber. And on and on and on.
Not everyone needs to learn to code. I agree that exposure to it and a basic understanding of it is good, just like other disciplines. But this is already happening! I learnt LOGO in primary school and then mindstorms, VB and HTML in high school. And so did everyone else, they weren't electives.
First, that's not nationwide in the US. I'm not aware of it being nationwide anywhere. In my school, there was a computer programming course on the list of choices. It disappeared when the time to actually register arrived. There was a web design course. We used dreamweaver. No one knew HTML. I spent the majority of my time in the class helping the other students do things they couldn't do in dreamweaver. The situation is less than ideal. In fact, I once presented a slideshow describing various programming languages. When I finished, my teacher asked if there were any questions. A handful of people knew programming was used to make games. Everyone else had blank looks. One girl actually said "I didn't even know this existed" with a look of shock.
Second, learning to program doesn't have to be the same as learning to be a software engineer. It's vaguely akin to basic repair skills. Knowing how to automate aspects of your work on a computer is extremely useful. Programming is applicable to almost every remotely technical career path.
Also in the 7-10 high school syllabus there are options for projects that include: AI simulation and modelling, multimedia authoring, database design, website development, networking, robotics and software development and programming. http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_sc/pdf_doc/inf...
In years 7-10 I found myself helping other students in the class just like yourself. Even though our teacher had formerly held a programming position. That doesn't validate the need for it though. That just shows that it is a very alien topic to most people and that you can't have a single teacher give personalised help to a class of 30 kids.
We don't have nationwide standards for curriculum in the US.. shocking, I know. Most schools do similar things, but there's a wide variety of quality and content of education.
Then you're lucky. Not everyone has that opportunity. Everyone uses computers pretty much every day. Knowing a little bit about how computers work can make it 1000x easier to use computers. If you believe it's all magic, you can't properly figure out problems by yourself.
Accountant/engineers/electricians: Maths
Doctors: Biology
Chemists: Chemistry
Programmer: Erm... ICT where you can learn how to use word and publisher.
It's just not the same. There is no base subject to springboard into the rest of the subject like other subjects do.
Not everyone needs to learn to code. I agree that exposure to it and a basic understanding of it is good, just like other disciplines. But this is already happening! I learnt LOGO in primary school and then mindstorms, VB and HTML in high school. And so did everyone else, they weren't electives.