Digital Literacy – Is it Important?
Although not every discipline in the humanities necessarily requires learning how to code, having a certain foundation of skill sets relating to the digital world certainly should be obligatory for students in the humanities realm. For many universities and colleges around the country, they require students to have a certain level of “literacy” with specific academic skill sets, such as quantitative thinking, mathematical analysis, writing, and language-learning. However, as the world becomes increasingly digital, humanities students must meet modern-day digital literacy, and that includes a certain level of coding.
A computer language will not replace the comparativist’s need to know Spanish or French or German, or the budding medievalist’s command of Latin and Greek.
Kirschenbaum, Matt. Hello Worlds: Why Humanities Students Should Learn to Program
This is not to say that other forms of literacy (language learning in this case) are not important, digital literacy is simply another component, although new, which aids in navigating academic disciplines, as well as the world.
Starting from Zero
My prior coding experience can be summed up by my third-grade computer class, where we opened Scratch and played around for an hour once a month. Since then, like many fellow students in the humanities, I have strategically avoided any other contact with coding, or even scarier, computer science. With the emergence of AI tools, I had become increasingly unmotivated to learn how to code, as it felt like the mechanics behind it weren’t as useful as I had once thought. However, I had begun to feel stuck in certain academic conversations, as I had almost zero understanding of how coding worked, and lacked overall digital literacy.
Why humanities students should learn to code
- To increase literacy in a digital world.
- To try something new!
- To engage with other academic disciplines
3 thoughts on “The Inevitability of Coding”
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I like how you understand coding as yet another tool to provide people with the skills they need to succeed in today’s digital era. This does not negate the importance of other skills, like language learning, but simply increases ones entire skill set! I think that this distinction of digital literacy is especially important. We don’t have to be expert coders but understanding other disciplines can only help increase cross-field collaboration etc.
I like how you present the idea that coding is becoming integral in so many areas in a clear and convincing way. I also liked how you showed that it isn’t just for techies, but is relevant across disciplines. The examples you bring up (or that you could include) make your argument feel grounded and real. Your writing makes me reflect on how coding might become a tool I’ll use, even in unexpected ways.
Grace, your argument is really strong! I especially agree with your point about the necessity of a basic understanding of digital skills as the world has revolved more and more around technology. Also, your code block of bullet points sums it all up really well and simply. Expanding one’s range of knowledge so they can be digitally literate and engage with other disciplines is crucial!