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Many people have said "teach everyone to code!" or cheer-leaded for "learning to code!" but there hasn't been enough discussion about what a Computer Science component to a liberal arts education ought to look like.
In mathematics we have many lists and trees of what mathematicians think people ought to learn, what order it should be learned in.
Not so in computer science. We just say "learn to code" this would be like if math people said "learn to integrate functions!"
Notice that "integrating functions" is an outcome, a specific skill. A nice one that implies you know a lot of math... maybe. But not all math curriculums end there. There is a robust debate in math education about if we obsesses about The Calculus too much, everyone understands that doing some integrals isn't "knowing math."
I think most CS educators understand something similar but there is much less consensus about what it is that we are teaching if not "how to code."
For me the major topics of a CS education for the general public are:
* Computer Hardware
* Encoding and Decoding
* Logic and Control Structures
* Iterration
* Objects & Functions
* Databases
* Ethics and Applications
* User Interfaces and Design
* Computer Networks
* Computer History
This list keeps changing every time I revise my courses which is every year.
I added functions with objects, but students learn about functions almost from day one.
**File Structures need a clear home.
@futurebird I feel computer networks are missing here?
I agree. However, as a HS teacher the resistance and total lack of support I get when I want to teach about networks is remarkable.
And computer history should include a history of networks explaining why the internet is the way that it is.
@futurebird oh, that's sad. It seems such a closed field also. While most of the stuff isn't super complicated.
Any time you combine "the internet" and "children" people freak out. And not without reasons, but it's also very unhelpful.
I have been trying to get an intranet set up for them to learn, but I get so little support doing this from IT. And I'm asking a lot of them! There are not a lot of off the shelf "educational servers" designed for kids to play with that have been tested for years and come with worksheets and lesson plans.
I have to make all that from SCRATCH.
@futurebird @wmd I wonder if you could recruit some of your students to be your own skunkworks IT department? I bet if you asked around you would find some who already have knowledge in this area. Turn it into an afterschool club for eager beavers and you could create a knowledge transfer pipeline. It won’t happen right away, and there will need to be some hardware investment (crowdfunded? grant money?), but over time I bet you could get the bespoke network of your dreams.
Doing this without support from IT would mean making our own wifi or mesh network? This is a nice idea but it's also a lot for me who has never set up such a network from scratch. Getting computers to play with is *NOT* hard-- but knowing what software to put on them and why? I don't even know where to start. I did some work with Lora a few years back to transmit data several miles but the whole goal was to get it onto the regular internet. 
@futurebird I bet you have a student who has set up their own network for home use. They can help.
Setting up the network itself could be as easy as installing a consumer-grade WiFi router. The “internet side” of the router hooks up to your regular school network, and all your stuff connects to the WiFi network and the LAN ports on the router. The router will handle protocols like DNS and DHCP with little or no intervention from you.
It is not easy to connect to our school network. That is the issue. I need cooperation from IT to make such things possible and that means for the admins to tell IT that, yes, I really do need that kind of access.
@futurebird Ugh. Sorry your IT people are that way.
I don't think it's their fault exactly. There are few if any schools that are doing what I think we ought to be doing.
@futurebird Overwhelmed and under budget. It was the same at Danielle’s high school.