Today's world is one full of technology. A lot of this technology is not only hardware driven. It requires essentially recipes to be written to tell the computer, smart phone, etc. what to do. These people are computer programmers, and is one of the most demanded fields.
The lack of knowledge in this area has led to an increase consumption without an appreciation or want to improve on the technology. Knowing programming increases one's appreciation, as well as appreciation for many other disciplines through collaboration. The tools exist to teach the concepts to a wide audience of different ages in many different forms.
Based off of this, please consider making this a requirement in some shape of form for education at all ages.