Apple announces that it will form tags with authorities to teach programming to students of all public schools in Chicago

As a chronic lack of programmers is screamed, Apple has revealed that it will proceed a strategy to teach programming to students of all public schools in Chicago, USA. In the background there is a problem of "diversity" faced by IT companies such as Apple.

Apple to teach coding to every Chicago public school student
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/12/12/apple-teach-every-chicago-public-school-student-code/942609001/

Apple's CEO Tim Cook told USA TODAY, one of the leading American papers, to provide funds to local educational institutions to provide programming classes to all public schools in Chicago We clarified policy to cooperate including. Among them, Apple is an initiative launched by the company in 2016Everyone Can Code"We aim to teach students the knowledge of coding using the programming language" Swift ".

Everyone Can Code - Apple (Japan)
https://www.apple.com/jp/everyone-can-code/


In the background that this policy was set, in addition to the situation that the IT industry chronically lacks programmers, there seems to be a situation that the workers are biased towards white men there. Not only Apple but also major IT companies have similar circumstances, and voices call for correction from organizations seeking diversity of employees.

Even though Apple picked Chicago this time, that background is also affecting. Chicago with 450,000 students from elementary school to high school, junior college is an area of ​​high racial diversity among the Americans, and Chicago of about 84 children in educational institutions called "K-12" from kindergarten to high school Percentage is black or HispanicStatistics releasedIt has been.

Mr. Cook said about this policy "It is not about taking the worst action of being involved in the educational curriculum in the passive state," How much women and minorities learn coding? "And waiting for the result, we It is necessary to support it.It is necessary to fundamentally change the situation on diversity by engaging from primary to higher education. "


Similar initiatives are being advanced by various organizations,Code.orgYaBlack Girls Code,Girls Who CodeAnd other organizations are advancing efforts to improve diversity society through coding. Also, Google is doing similar efforts in Chicago, and hip-hop artists "Chance The RapperLaunchedSocialWorks(About 110 million yen) against the school in Chicago, and $ 500,000 (about 55 million yen) to the school in Chicago through Google.org, a charity organization.

It is unclear what kind of scale Apple will proceed with this time.