Limor Fried:
On Tuesday, you challenged
American high schools to better
equip graduates for the demands
of a high-tech economy.
When I attended high school,
I had to take a foreign
language requirement.
So my question is, can we make
it a national effort to also add
a computer programming
language requirement?
The President:
I think it makes
sense, I really do.
And, you know, part of what I'm
trying to do here is to make
sure that we're working with
high schools and school
districts all across the
country to make the high school
experience relevant
for young people,
not all of whom are going to get
a four-year college degree or an
advanced degree.
And, you know, I think that the
concept of vocational education
got a bad rap at a certain point
because the perception was,
well, you know, we're tracking
folks into, you know,
blue-collar jobs and we're
reserving white-collar jobs for
a certain group.
All those categories,
I think, have eroded.
So, you know, you look at
somebody like Mark Zuckerberg,
I was sitting next to him at
dinner a couple of years ago,
and he basically said, you know,
he taught himself programming.
Primarily because he was
interested in games.
And there are a whole bunch
of young people out there,
I suspect, who if in high school
are given the opportunity to
figure out here's how you
can design your own games,
but it requires you to know math
and it requires you to know
science or, you know, here's
what a career in graphic design
looks like, and we're going to
start setting those -- you know,
programs in our high schools,
not waiting until the community
college, and then you can
apprentice with somebody who's
already a graphic
designer in your area.
What it does not only is to
prepare young people who may
choose not to go to a four-year
college to be job ready,
but it also engages kids because
they feel like I get this.
This is not just me sitting
there slouching in the back of
the room while
somebody's lecturing.
And I think given how pervasive
computers and the Internet is
now and how integral it is into
our economy and how fascinated
kids are with it, I want to
make sure that they know how to
actually produce stuff using
computers and not simply
consume stuff.
