Computing in Primary and Secondary Schools

There is a great push to introduce Computing as a separate subject in primary and secondary schools. Sadly these curricula focus on the use of the technology and very rarely on the principles. Even if principles are covered they are often obscured by the use of tools such as word processing, spreadsheets and web design. I have yet to see a good curriculum which does introduce computing as a separate subject but weaves into existing subjects. It should be possible to extend the current contents in mathematics, physics, biology etc. to include computing principles. But by creating a separate subject
a) we are cutting down on the other subjects a student taking the new computing subject studies. So they come to Universities with poorer backgrounds in the basic sciences and have limited writing skills.
b) appealing only to those who want to do computing -- often those who taste these subjects at the primary level get disillusioned and think computing is "secreterial".


I think we need to introduce concepts such as word processing in our language subjects, spreadsheets in business/mathematics subjects. We should also introduce the fundamental concepts
in mathematics/physics etc. For example, when discussing matrices we can talk about graph algorithms which shows why matrices are useful.

But I am not sure this is likely to happen as it easier to introduce a new subject than to rejig
the entire curriculum