Are Coding classes necessary for Children?
Steve Jobs, Co-Founder of Apple Inc., told that “Everyone should know how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think”. In today’s digital world, games, banking, shopping, ticket booking, seminars, classes, both regular and special and a variety of others have become online. All these would have been impossible without Coding.
In 2019 WhiteHat Jr., a company conducting coding classes for children, reported 20,000 enrolled students whereas, in 2020, it reported 40,000 students in view of Covid-19 lockdown.
Can kids learn coding with ease and do it for our real-world applications with fun? A question to be pondered over. In 2019 WhiteHat Jr., a company conducting coding classes for children, reported 20,000 enrolled students whereas, in 2020, it reported 40,000 students in view of Covid-19 lockdown.
How Coding was introduced in India
In India, Coding for children was started by White Hat Jr., a Mumbai based Edtech startup by Karan Bajaj in 2018. BYJU’S being the parent, this private company focuses on Edtech, distance education and m-learning.
In view of the pandemic, digitization of the modern world has become inevitable and will continue and become a norm. This requires coding in large-scale, and therefore, coders are in high demand. Since present-day children are favourite of or rather addicted to electronic gadgets, in the course of their playing games, they can be encouraged and trained to develop their own games. Coding is viewed as the next new literary next to English, Math and Science. Coding skills would help people working in a non-computer science related field achieve greater heights.
Why is Coding gaining popularity?
Coding is considered now as another extracurricular activity like dance, music, drawing, Abacus and a variety of others. Also, the world has a huge demand for coders. In view of no play and sports for most children, Coding can be fun and satisfying for them. During Coding, bigger problems are broken up into smaller problems. Since coding develops creativity, enhances thinking ability, thereby problem-solving capability develops perseverance due to failures in coding, it can be viewed as a personality developing skill.
Impact of Coding on young minds
Coding can help children excel in Math, analytical skills and in academics. Coding needs planning and hence it improves the thinking capability and writing skills of a child. A child has to code according to the user’s needs, and this helps him/her to communicate, collaborate with people and understand the world better. It, therefore, improves the IQ (Intelligent Quotient), EQ (Emotional Quotient) and AQ (Adaptability quotient) for the children.
In all this, as a parent, you may wonder what will be the impact on their spirituality and emotional behaviour? Will the children start believing that success in life is purely due to talent and there is no supreme power controlling this world? While learning coding, will they stop learning slokas or going to temples? Would they become arrogant? Will coding affect their spirituality?
These are some concerns that deserve a thought. Coding makes children success driven. Will they be able to face failures and real-world challenges later in life? Happiness in life depends on admiring, appreciating, giving, having a sense of humour and a variety of small gestures. Will coding imbibe in children these qualities or will they become too serious? Will they have an aesthetic sense, or will they become stressed too early in life? It will affect them emotionally to different extents depending on their passion for coding.
EQ development in children
As their success rate in coding increases, will they start thinking themselves as creators and lose faith in God? Will they be ready to face failures? Achievement (creating apps and software) being their only goal, will they feel happy or contented at their middle age having lost their childhood play and its memories? With moral science subject and morning assemblies where prayers and national anthem are recited removed in schools, can we expect moral values and patriotism in our future coding generation? All these have to be thought about before starting coding classes on a large scale.
Going forward
Having known the pros and cons of coding, it need not be forced on children by parents. If they feel stressed or uncomfortable, parents may as well discontinue their coding classes. Coding is just one of the skills for children to succeed. There are still plenty of fields gaining importance presently like agriculture, skilled labour, trade, arts and crafts and a variety of other subjects that are available for children to succeed in their life. So parents need not worry. In the meantime, children who have an absolute passion for coding can continue to be code creators, enjoying and having fun with their coding and become human supercomputers.
Contributor: Praba N (PhD)
About our Writing Program Student
Dr Praba N is an Associate Professor teaching Electronics & Communication Engineering at the Ghousia College of Engineering, Ramanagara, Karnataka. She is interested in content writing, as it is her long harboured dream to continue her passion of ’Essay writing ‘ which got left in school.
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It is a very well written article which in very simple and straight way provides us readers with all the pros of teaching coding to kids. But I feel it does not provide the holistic picture leading to an informed choice. But the writing and articulation was real good.
The decision is left to parents. If children enjoy coding that’s well and good. But if they feel it as a stress, they should be allowed to discontinue.
Praba.N
Learning to code at an early age is going to benefit kids even if they don’t wish to have a career in computer science. You have shared such an informative blog and would help many parents to decide whether they should enroll their kids in an educational coding program.
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