I don't think that calculus should be included in a high school curriculum. Differential modelling is a valuable skill, sure, but I don't think that it will be applicable to 95% of students. There are such a broad range of jobs in the world, and very, very few end up doing differential modelling, despite increasing numbers for university calculus course registration.

At my high school, Calc was only offered as an AP course. If I so wanted, I could stop taking math after Algebra 2 and still graduate.

Then perhaps there's ambiguity in the phrase "included in a high school curriculum." I consider calculus to have been included in my high school curriculum, but I chose to take it.

Wouldn't AP CS then satisfy such a definition of "in the curriculum" then? (Granted I know a lot of schools don't offer that class - it still exists).

Yes, per how I was using the phrase. My high school had an AP and non-AP version.

Have you ever head of Bob Mankoff? He's the cartoon editor of the New Yorker. He created a program to generate simple 1-grams and bi-grams of the weekly comic caption contest to get a general idea of what submissions are looking like, and what's popular. Right away he can get a good idea of what most people are thinking about it, and it has an effect on the caption they publish.

Maybe not as a core program, but I definitely think that all high schools should offer it as an elective. I was in the middle of teaching myself C++ when I took it, and I was completely stuck on the concept of pointers. Our teacher made the concept workable for me, and we had some decent programming projects on the side. It's probably where I learned to love being a polyglot as well, since the class was in Pascal. If I ever saw her again I'd definitely give her a hug for helping me cross the bridges I came to.

That's something I should have specified. I think it's a good elective as any, but I don't think it should be required.

CS (intro to programming, really) courses were an elective at my high school long before I got there, and were standard in the county. (Graduated in '99, went to high school in Fairfax County, VA.)

I think that as we depend on computers more, it's more important for people to have a basic understanding of what it even means to program. Demystifying technology is important. They may not even program, but I think it is becoming an important part of being educated for our society.

I've had friends who took the intro to CS class (just a basic sample of programming, in python) and they just could not understand the material. They worked hard, but it was just difficult to get concepts as simple as conventional variable naming and keywords (ie, they though every variable had to have a certain naming scheme or the program wouldn't run.)

Some people just don't have an aptitude for programming. Just like I don't have an aptitude for graphic design.

And just like some people don't have an aptitude for poetry, reading 16th century literature, doing differential equations or memorizing lists of dates and events.

Doesn't mean it shouldn't be taught as a part of the core curriculum.

The CS parts may not be directly useful, but there are other benefits. Things like organization and logic are useful for people to be familiar with.