Does your 8 year old need to learn to code?
In the last 1 week, 4-5 of my relatives have asked my opinion about enrolling their 6-12 yr old kids in coding courses. A lot of parents are driven by fear of missing out on a better future for their child and the way success is being defined by the coding academies for kids these days.
Dear Parents,
- Coding, for your kids, could be a hobby at best and you don't put your kids into hobby camps/courses unless they develop an interest in it.
- At the age of 6-14, you should be working towards digital distancing and de-addiction for your kids. There are many life skills that kids in this age bracket need to learn which are far more valuable than coding. Teach them health and hygiene, time management, personal finance, preparing a meal, cleaning, objective evaluation of things, etc that will go a long long way in life than learning to code.
- Your kid does not need to learn coding to become successful. No investor is going to pay millions to your kid for developing an app. A successful app is a solution to an existing problem. Your child needs to explore and understand the world to know what problems people face and have the logical ability to design a solution. An app could be just one of the means to solve it.
- Understanding and building software and apps is a complex process and coding is just one small step in the process. Coding is like flooring the tiles while making an apartment; there is much more to it while building an app. The programming language that your kid is being taught in the name of app development is most likely to be obsolete in the next 3-4 years.
Your kid's time to code will come. She/He is not losing the race. Let them identify if coding is what they want to pursue as a hobby or a career choice. At this tender age, encourage your child to go out, play, help others, and become better humans.
Senior Project Manager at Genpact with expertise in Project Management
10 个月The most needed article, I completely agree with every word what Vikrm Jain you have mentioned above. Kids should be nurtured in a way that they get to learn human values, basis ethics and many things like how to make friends, trust others, work in a team, and resolve conflicts. They can also learn how to use good manners, ask for help, and negotiate with others. Children can start to understand the feelings of others, but only with encouragement. They can learn polite language, basic rules of interaction with people, social behavior rules, conflict resolution, and social and cultural perception. We all should ignore these code learning speeches in this age when there are much more important things for them to learn to make them a good human being and know things around them, lot of changes must be happening, they should learn how to react to them. Let's get emotionally attached to them so that you are able to take care of their emotional health tooooo which is more important.
Design Engineer at BOEING | INCOSE Member | Systems Engineering, MBSE.
4 年Thanks for sharing
Lead Systems Engineer at Boeing.
4 年Well said
Senior Manager at Capegemini Consulting India Private Limited | Ex - Deloitte
4 年Very well explained Vikram and much needed post...!!
Vice President - Leading Hybrid-Operate Portfolio Technology Transformation
4 年It’s a pity how some are falling for it !!