In this day and age, as the electronic industry continues to develop at rates faster than ever before, digital technology bombards us wherever we turn, with the digital and electronic job market growing exponentially in order to keep up with the demand. As a child, emphasis in education was placed on Maths, English and Science rather than skills which would assist me to develop in today’s market, but as schools begin to catch on to the necessity of instilling digital skills into the next generation, we talk about coding.
In simple terms, coding is telling a computer what to do, using programmes such as Java or even HTML, specifically designed to give step-by-step instructions to a computer, commanding it to follow orders. If you look around, you’re sure to see people using their smartphones, holding an iPad or even screens hung around shopping malls or bus stops, used for advertising purposes, but if you focus on the apps and technology people are using on these gadgets, coding is at the core of all of this. Every app or programme relies on coding to function, and without the next generation of coders, we will be lost. In one article, Anthony Cuthbertson points out that: “Over the next 10 years it is estimated that there will be 1.4 million jobs in computer sciences and only around 400,000 graduates qualified to do them”, which is why it is so important that schools build coding into the curriculum.
Although some economists suggest the demand for coding in future jobs isn’t as high as currently forecasted, schools around the world are hedging their bets by placing a programme for coding into the education system, with the U.K. beginning a computer science course for children between the ages of five and sixteen in 2014 and Singapore setting up the Code for Fun programme, designed “to increase students’ exposure to coding and computational thinking” (IDA).
Noted amongst the supporters of the need for coding in education is Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who earlier this year was praised by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, who commented that PM Lee was “one of the only world leaders who knows how to code” (Zuckerberg, February 2016). PM Lee has called for Singaporean youngsters to “be exposed to programming, as Singapore develops its “Smart Nation” technologies to help citizens lead efficient lives”( Kiasu Parents, May 2016), with an estimated suggestion that Singapore will have a lack of 30,000 technology specialists by next year.
So why do you ask, is coding being taught to children as young as five? Well, similarly to key skills and language which are learnt at a young age, the earlier a child learns to program, the earlier they gain a deeper understanding of the logic necessary to programming. If we think about some of the most successful men within the technology field, they all boast the advantage of having age on their side, with Zuckerberg, Gates and Jobs to name but a few members of society who have reached an incredible level of success at a fairly young age. This thirst for digital technology is more likely to continue to snowball rather than reaching a peak and petering out, so why not start a child’s digital education along early and support them through the harbouring of their skills which will leave them more advantageous in a competitive job market in the future.
Coding has many arguments for why it should be and has been placed into the curriculum – a gap in the market needing to be filled by capable staff, the teaching of developmental and logic skills, in addition to making children more aware of the world around them and how digital components are brought together to build up the environment, so the next time you’re presented with the opportunity to send your child to a coding course, enrol them, because you never know what success it will lead to in the future.