Textual Analysis

Robert Young

English 250

Section PN

2/24/2014

Forget Foreign Languages and Music. Teach Our Kids to Code: An Analysis

What would you think of a five-year-old trying to program a computer: and succeeding? “Forget Foreign Languages and Music. Teach Our Kids to Code,” by Brendan I Koerner, a columnist for Wired magazine, proves that this is possible. Children can learn the basic principles of programming in their early years, despite the public opinion that programming is something that is above the level of kindergarteners and elementary school students. To prove this point, Koerner quotes Paul Gibson, a Computer Science teacher in France, references several programs that attempt to teach programming at a younger age, and making comparisons between computer languages and music and foreign languages.

In this article, the point is more that you can teach programming principles at a young age rather than the code language itself. The difference is that programming principles have more to do with problem solving skills and less to do with  code syntax and actually writing statements and executing them. Basically, he’s teaching them how to come up with pseudo-code rather than the actual code itself. They come up with the steps they need to take in order to solve a problem, then have the instructor implement them. In order to teach the language itself, and get all of the syntax correct, the children do, indeed have to learn how to read and write. Otherwise, they won’t have a clue what they just wrote down. A solution to this would be Drag and Drop programming (something that I have personal experience with), where symbols are used instead of words to come up with algorithms. Then the children won’t have to worry about the syntax or how things are spelled or anything like that. This is exactly what Koerner is trying to convey when he says “Kindergarteners cannot become C++ ninjas, but they can certainly start to develop the skills that will eventually cement lifelong fluency in code.”

In the second paragraph, Koerner quoted that Gibson was able to teach “Rudimentary Java to 8- and 9-year olds.” In the next paragraph, he claims that Gibson was successful in teaching kindergarteners “how to create graph algorithms” and “write a tic-tac-toe program.” Later in the paragraph, Gibson was quoted “Children aged from 5-11 have so much potential for learning about algorithms and computation that it would be a shame to wait until they are teenagers before we teach them the foundations.” This statement appeals to the audience through their feelings, calling it “a shame” to not teach programming principles this early in childhood. If a parent were to read this, they would want their child to learn the principles of programming in school. Quoting Paul Gibson was extremely successful in proving that children can learn the basics of programming principles at a young age.

Toward the end of this article, Koerner brings up some of the other programs that are trying to teach kids how to program. In one of these, “children as young as 4 are using a language called Cherp to make robots perform household chores.” Another “challenges kids to code their own versions of Frogger.” The initiative to teach children to code is gaining speed. It isn’t just a few people here and there that think it is a good idea, it is becoming broader as more research is conducted. This section of the article is especially effective in proving that children are capable of learning programming because he is able to cite specific cases where it has already happened.

In conclusion, this article did a very good job at proving that children can program. Specific sources have been cited that say children have already started programming. Gibson was teaching Java to 8- and 9-year-olds and getting kindergarteners to program tic-tac-toe, while other people were helping kids program their own game, as well as telling robots how to do their chores. Koerner also relates learning programming languages to learning foreign languages, saying that they learn languages so easily because of the way their brains work at such a young age.