Start coding Kids, right or wrong?
In India, the internet and TV commercials today are filled with ads on promoting kids to start learning coding may be at the age of 10–12 yrs. The propaganda seems to refer to business achievers like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk & Bill Gates as reference inspiration who could build up large business empires primarily because they were good at coding and the reason outlined for them being good at coding is just because they started early. Some ads are also targeting nationalistic ego as a means to promote early coding and how it brings Laurence to the country.
In many ways starting early on a special skill set and learning is not new. Sachin Tendulkar started cricket very early & Lata Mangeshkar started singing early too. Does coding relate with the same formula & benefits. Can coding be seen as a lifelong skill ? and if you start early does it help to excel in your field of operation faster & better. Coding in many ways is an extension of mathematics, literature and computer science as core principles and given our current education system when do we feel is an appropriate time for kids to start and focus on coding. Should they look at it as a hobby, as a career or an easy means of becoming rich & famous.
While paid celebrities and parents (may be under ignorance) are encouraging this practice, do actual software communities also agree to this idea of forcing all kids to become coding champions? Does schools in principle also align with this idea and does it not take away from the rest of the education curriculum. Will coding become mainstream? Does it take away the charm of learning science, literature and sports? Question is how do we maintain balance. If a child becomes very good at coding but does poorly on basic school courses and sports, will that be acceptable to parents, teachers and society in general.
One thing is to look at coding as an early hobby stream for kids but soon it will become a competitive stream in itself. Should the Indian education system not think how this gets integrated with the existing structure and how it gets complimented. The idea of holistic learning and preparing kids for long term life challenges has to be the key driver for our education system, the same argument many times goes towards coaching classes and I cannot claim that I have reached 100% conclusion of whether this is right or wrong. Also my kids are under 4 yrs, so of course I do not have first hand experience and hence seek thoughts from larger audiences.
With this new wave of Junior developers which will hit the market soon, how does it impact the existing IT industry? Some food for thought, if kids encounter early success in coding by the time they are reaching 20, how many of them will want to continue formal education and take college degrees. Some school of thoughts are linking coding with entrepreneurship (pointing to some of our hi-tech heroes), coding can be looked up as starting point but entrepreneurship is about having business sense and not just being good at one technology,
On one side, the IT professionals are faced with tremendous ergonomics challenges for sitting in front of a computer for a longer period of time and then on the other side we are promoting kids to start with the same life-style from an early age. Will it not lead to escalation of the problem to a much larger scale?. Coding is a very grilling activity and it’s not really an easy process, something that takes years and years. Some kids can get it faster but if your kids get into a trauma of not being good at it, it will take a much larger time and energy to overcome that. What if this ealy adventure could scare a lot of kids to never take up programming in the future. May be some parents believe that their kids are genius and been blessed with excellent learning and coding skill and they look forward to them becoming millionaires very soon but
It’s going to be interesting how this wave is going to shape in future. As long as kids enjoy this journey there is the possibility of bringing fruits but if the major percentage of kids could not comprehend and get stuck, it could lead to bigger problems for the future.
All advertisements should be taken with a grain of salt and not everything we hear could be the truth or practically realistic. It’s important to retrospect as a society where this will lead us to. Or maybe the wave has fired so much that there is no coming back out of it.
