Teaching programming to young children
Last week, a friend showed me a newspaper article about young children, as young as ten years old, are writing malicious code to hack into accounts of video gaming sites to steal passwords and “virtual money” so they can play on line computer games without paying. He said: “I cannot believe that young children can do something like that.”
I asked: “Are you surprise because they can write code or because they hack into a computer system?”
He said: “Both, I think children must be educated on coding “rights and wrongs.”
I told him: “If schools are still teaching young children to write code without teaching them about responsibilities then this problem will continue. According to the newspaper article, Security specialists found that these malware were written in Visual Basic - the language that is taught in elementary school. These malicious codes contain many errors that professional hackers were never made. Some even expose the original source such as stealing “passwords” and “virtual money” then sends back to hackers' own email addresses. That was why security people knew that hackers were amateurs, mostly young children. Of course, experienced hackers would never put this information in their code. Several cases were linked to elementary school children in Canada where their parents just brought them iPads or Laptops last Christmas. In past years, Canada, the UK, and Scandinavian countries were few countries that begun to teach children to write code in elementary school.”
My friend said: “We need to teach children that they cannot go online and play games without paying. Teachers must teach them about ethic when they teach programming.”
I asked him: “Why do we hurry to teach children to use such powerful tool before they are matured enough? Would you give a ten years old child a real gun and tell him not to shoot? There are things children should learn at that young age but definitely NOT programming. They can learn about it later.”
My friend was surprised: “But we are living in the “Information Age”, we must teach children about technology just like read and write. They must know computer programming too. How could a Computer Science professor like you disagree with this view?
I explained: “There is a time to learn to use a computer; there is also a time to learn about writing code but NOT at this early age. Young children need to build a strong basic foundation such as reading, writing, moral and responsibilities first. From this strong foundation, they can build science, math, and technology on top on it as they grow up and go to high school. By developing strong moral characters first, they will learn about responsibilities for their family, their society, and their country. Elementary school is the place to build the foundation for moral characters as they can acquire technical knowledge later. Without these moral characters, knowledge could be more harm than good. Many parents are worrying that their children may not be able to compete in technology, so they buy computers, connect to the Internet, send them to school to learn programming without knowing that without a basic foundation on moral, responsibilities and ethics, young children could get into bad habits and writing malicious code is only one of them.”
Elementary school is the place that we teach children about honesty, about being filial to parents, about being responsible to their family, to their society, to their country. Elementary school is where they learn to speak the truth, about honor and integrity, and to be self-conscious. Elementary school is where they learn about culture, about their heritage, their country, their history, their language, about their ancestors, their heroes from past generations. There are so many thing young children must learn so they can build a strong foundation and grow up to be responsible adults. Only with strong moral characters, they know how to distinguish rights from wrongs. Only with strong moral characters, even when they occupy certain position, they still are able to maintain their integrity. Only with strong moral characters, even when they face difficulties, they will not give up. Only with a strong moral characters they will not be lure by personal benefits gain and lose their honor and integrity.
As a teacher, I never worry about whether young people can or cannot learn about technology or programming. These things will change as they will come and go. However I do worry that by hurry to teach them something too fast, too soon or hurry to follow some social trends but forget to educate them on the basic foundation then we are losing our education goal to develop responsible citizens to our country.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
