I like that this is being offered--the _opportunity_ should be there.

However, I really wish this sort of effort could be de-coupled from the "CODE" idea and filtered by interest on a per-kid basis, as with other subjects, even algebra. As things stand, people will eventually self-select anyway, so the inevitable change in or out of STEM is simply delayed until it's later, and even more awkward and difficult. For example, during one's sophomore year of university, after a tremendously walled-off personal identity has been constructed on the back of the STEM vision. A school-age child robbed of interests-based focus now easily becomes a societal liability later.

I have three school-age children. If one of them likes STEM, wonderful. Or maybe they will become an animal trainer, or a pawn shop owner or drive a garbage truck. That's fine. Or maybe they will become a counselor for people who are looking to get out of STEM (I am coaching a couple of those people right now).

I'd also like to see the over-emphasized CODE replaced with TECHNOLOGIZE or some broader-minded term that allows talented people to get out of the coding mindset and yet realize they can still be beneficial within STEM, and maybe even realize that technology can be developed by folding pieces of paper together, or by working in the forest. In other words, you can CODE without CODING and people are being tricked and boot-camping their way into dead-ends because they don't know that.

As an example of someone who could STEM in their sleep and never write code, take Richard Feynman. Or Einstein. Could Albert Einstein "code" on an IBM Mark I? Who cares?

Not that coding is bad, just that it's not the only thing by a long shot. And it's emphasized by a lot of people who absolutely will not ever write any code. The "code parents" I know who are falling over themselves to get coding into schools for their kids are the same people who ask their nephews to code things for them, not because they "can't do it but wish they could", but because they are interested in higher-level pursuits. They want their kids to have a tiny bit of exposure to CODE so these kids can run in CODE-type circles, yet still not actually CODE. But some of those kids will not get it and will have nervous breakdowns because they think they are supposed to learn to write CODE.

Further down the STEM path, we get these IT interviews in which the interviewer projects knowledge and experience they themselves didn't have at the interviewee's level onto the interviewee. Even when it's just to get into somebody's head and see how they think, it fails to pass muster at the Psychology 101 level and it's a huge problem that prevents healthy teams from forming. I personally interviewed for one of these jobs, got the job, and then walked into a room full of people who were laughing at how it was possible (luck) that I could have known the answers. Then I went on to learn by experience that the most desirable candidate for the position would have been a politician with some small amount of IT knowledge, someone who could elevate the department in the eyes of the other departments, which were intelligently run at a political level. The STEM-driven department needed the opposite of STEM in order to really become what it could become. Stanford Teamology project results showed something similar--psychological diversity is a huge key to problem solving, and becoming aware of its existence and benefits is the mechanism that turns the key.

In order to create a ramp from CODE to this broader look at tech, it would probably be beneficial to build a more realistic yet still basic model for STEM that completely stomps all over the CODE notion by adding enough nuance that candidates for STEM careers are given additional leverage in non-CODE yet very-much-still-STEM areas. [I am writing CODE in upper case because in the world I'm observing, it's some kind of uberword].