Coding as an L2

When people ask, as Carlye did this week, whether we should view coding as a second language, I tend to answer with a resounding yes. As a foreign language teacher, I always want to position myself as a pluralist on this issue, mostly because of guys like this who think we shouldn't even bother to teach languages. Economists like this, aren't going anywhere either. A little learning is a dangerous thing, indeed. But, as ridiculous these folks may sound, they have encouraged me to defining what I think the role of languages should be in the curriculum. Having taught in a school that allowed students to take two elective language courses every semester and seen a number of formerly monolingual students graduate tri-lingual as a result, I know what's possible. So, how could we reorganize the curriculum to accommodate this fundamental similarity between constructed and natural languages, as well as responding to the urgent skills gap for coding?

Short answer: I would institute a training program to create positions for linguists in high schools and then train foreign language teachers in linguistics. The default course in which students would be enrolled would be Linguistics, not Spanish, French, German, etc. Within the linguistics track, students could choose a language (or languages) to study as a “specialization.” Constructed languages, such as Python and Esperanto, would be taught alongside natural languages, and all languages studied would be taught using the native language/dialect of the student (where possible, obviously I don’t speak Tamil or Tagalog) as a basis for comparison. Prescriptivist “grammar” would no longer be taught, and “English” classes would be reserved for ESL. “Literature” courses would teach presentational academic writing and would be language-neutral, i.e. native Spanish speakers would become proficient in academic reading/writing in the Spanish as well.

If you think about it, this makes sense. Language, like math or biology, is a fundamental category of phenomena. Our K-12 curriculum should explore it in all its depth and at least some of its breadth. 

So, what do you think of this audacious plan? Can you improve it?