“Learn to code” is one of those phrases people like throwing around, often with different meanings or connotations. Usually, however, it’s said as something that’s both difficult and very important to do. And it is important, though not necessarily in the way we usually think about it. As for difficulty, that depends on how people go about it. In fact, with the right approach and program, even children can start learning to code very easily right after they are done with their ABCs. Here’s how and why every child should learn to code early in life.
Why Learning to Code Is So Important for Children?
For a long time, as well as to this day, coding has been seen as just a profession. An intense and often quite lucrative profession, but nothing more than that. As such, when using Codemonkey.com or other such courses to teach kids how to code from an early age, this was typically seen as something parents do for their kids in an attempt to set them up for a future career in software development. This isn’t a bad idea in and of itself, of course, but that’s far from the only or even most important reason kids should learn to code today.
In recent years, it has become evident that coding and various other software skills are about to become basic and necessary skills for people in the future. Many mistakenly believe that the advent of AI is going to make coding skills obsolete. However, the opposite seems likely to be true. Instead of AI making coders obsolete, software developers are expected to need to become even better to be able to use AI tools as effectively as possible in the future.
Coding as a Type of Literacy
What’s more, this likely won’t apply just to software developers. Instead, all people will probably be expected to soon know their way around a site’s or program’s code in most professional fields and in most non-professional endeavors and hobbies.
Some folks, like Mark Surman, the Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, believe that coding will soon become a necessary life skill and a type of literacy:
“Code has become the 4th literacy. Everyone needs to know how our digital world works, not just engineers,” Surman says.
Another way to look at it would be that coding can simply be understood as a part of the third literacy – technology literacy. According to most definitions, there are three main types of literacies people should be aware of, in addition to basic reading literacy:
- Information literacy is the ability to understand facts, figures, data, and statistics. Information literacy is the ability to discern fact from fiction, being able to steer clear of falsehoods, lies, and conspiracies, and so on.
- Media literacy aka the ability to discern between the different outlets of media and information sources, to distinguish between their various biases, and to then moderate your media diet in a healthy way to avoid misinformation.
- Technology literacy or the ability to handle both hardware and software tools, use them to your advantage for both work and everyday life, as well as keep up with the numerous technological advances that take places every year.
All three of these literacies are beneficial for people today to know. What’s more, all three of them are things parents can and should teach to their children from an early age. And the third literacy, that for technology, is something we can easily add coding skills to if we don’t want to necessarily separate them into a different fourth category.
Other Major Reasons Why Every Child Should Learn to Code
Preparing for the future is fine and all, but that’s far from the only thing to consider when deciding whether to use a course like Codemonkey to help teach your kids how to code. Other, and arguably even more important, reasons include:
1. Coding from an early age nurtures kids’ creativity.
2. Coding games for kids boost kids’ confidence.
3. Coding lessons are a great way to teach children resilience and persistence.
4. Coding teaches logical thinking, pattern-spotting, structural thinking, algorithmic thinking, and more.
All of these are invaluable skills and qualities every child should develop early on in life, regardless of what career they end up pursuing in the future and how important coding skills themselves are going to end up being in their adult lives. Much like (or even more so than) giving your child puzzles, constructors, or drawing kits, giving them access to coding games and courses is one the best ways to guarantee that your kid will grow up smart, capable, well-developed, and ready for everything the world is going to throw at them.
Featured Image by Pexels from Pixabay
