Sharmaji Ka Beta Is Learning To Code But Does Your Kid Need To?

FOMO is driving parents to enroll their children in pricey coding classes but these are not a magic wand that will turn Junior into the next Zuckerberg

- Ketaki Desai

Jitendra Ramchandani was skeptical about introducing his daughter to cod-ing. As a UI/UX designer, he has been straddling the tech and design world for the last 15 years, and the last thing he wanted to do was to stunt her creativity. “Design helps people use their brain more creatively while code instructs your brain to follow step-by-step instructions. My wife and I had been guiding my daughter in designing, making sketches and objects so her thinking is more outbound. But when she turned nine, we introduced her to coding,” says the Jaipur resident. His daughter has been enjoying her coding course for the last three months but Ramchandani says he has doubts about the tall promises being made to parents. “I recently got a certificate that said: Congratulations, your daughter is the youngest game designer and has learnt deep UI and UX. As a UI/UX professional, I ask how can you throw the word “deep” around? They’re making a fool out of parents.”

Over the last few years, parents and kids are being bombarded with messaging that positions coding as a must-have skill for the future. Nothing too wrong with that except that many such courses have poorly qualified teachers cost a lot of money, and paint an unrealistic picture of little crorepati programmers.