[OPINION, EP. 1] Why does everyone want to become a programmer?
It’s 2019, you know, it’s “the future”. Remember those ‘future-proof’ skills you were told to learn as a child? coding, programming, building apps, websites, software, and, wait for it, Artificial Intelligence… Well, the future is here, now is the time to save the planet with your amazing skills in PHP. That’s right, it is time to write functions to patch the ozone hole, to model global poverty following Object-Oriented Programming principles, to challenge the oppression of women and minorities around the world by deploying more apps to the Playstore.
Because it is the future, our kids have to be up-to-date with the essential programming skills, of course. I don’t want my children to end up jobless, do you? Thankfully, the number of school (and out of school) programmes to teach our children to code has exploded in recent years, which keeps my mind at ease that future generations will be well-equipped to navigate the increasingly uncertain world and face global challenges (climate change and whatnot) with confidence, and most of all, be able to find jobs easily. After all, that’s what matters, right?
I think the point is clear by now. We live in a world that glorifies technology. and more so, the people who create this technology. What’s wrong with that? you may ask. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Then what’s the issue here? the issue is that we are falling into a 2.0 version of the problems we created technology to solve in the first place. Technology is supposed to challenge the traditional ‘standardised’ model of education, why are we forcing our children to study code and code alone? technology is supposed to facilitate learning, why are we encouraging the tech fields in school and ignoring the rest? By over glorifying tech, we are overlooking essential skills that the planet so desperately needs to survive. I’m talking problem-solving, critical thinking, empathy, world view, and the often too complex art of being responsible human beings. We are developing generations of youth who can perfectly communicate with machines but can’t debate one another. We have armies of engineers who spend the majority of their day (and night) building software and hardware and can’t find a day for their families. I don’t want to give a dark view of the tech world, because I myself am a software engineer by training, but is this really what we want to teach the future generations? do we take time off our daily schedules to teach our kids how to care for one another and for the planet they are going to live in? instead of teaching them how to find a job in a future that may not even exist? Here, I think we have our priorities wrong.
There are numerous initiatives that promote technology for social and humanitarian good, why isn’t this aspect embedded in school curricula? I don’t think this is an ‘extra’, like, this is technology, and using it for sustainable and humanitarian good is that sprinkle on top. I think technology is the only tool that transcends industries, regions, politics, socio-economics, and almost all else. And it must be taught accordingly, should we want to see a world that upholds our values and cultures and diversity as human beings. Otherwise, robots can do a perfectly good job inhabiting the world. They can be taught to code, create software, generate income and run the planet more efficiently than we do since they are less likely to start wars over oil and whose God is true.
Before teaching children to code, we must teach them that we are human beings. Take a moment with your children every other night and have a human discussion with them. Talk about aspirations, fears, hopes and dreams. Not what was your score in Maths, or what do you want to be when you grow up. We are so focused on making money and finding jobs that we anchored even our family discussions around making money and finding jobs.
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