You have hit the nail right on the head. Everybody + opportunity + non-mandatory. This concept of equal opportunity seems to have disappeared in the last 5 years and I'm heartened to see people still talk about equal opportunity (vs the fallacy of equality), even if the media doesn't discuss opportunity anymore.

I was a kid who was writing assembly at about 10 years old because I loved it. I saved up to buy my own computer by delivering newspapers for 2 years. I learned to program by trial and error. I introduced my kids to programming but never pushed it. They have not embraced programming like my wife and I did when we were kids. I would not want programming mandated for my kids, despite my own passion for programming.

A comfort using computers to do research, word processing, calculation and create basic posters/articles/projects/videos would be very beneficial and may be better a better mandate than programming.

Why not mandatory? Lots of other core, useful skills are.

Because I believe it is not an essential surviving skill for everyone (at least for now).

Neither is literature, nor languages, nor history, nor geography, nor mathematics over simple addition and subtraction.

But we teach these to kids so that they have a greater chance of understanding the world around them.

Fair point. But what subject should we replace from the current curriculum? Adding another subject seems like another burden for students.