5 reasons why kids should draw and not code!
One of the parents (father to be precise) of my kid’s friend exclaimed in happiness that My Son Can Code! He went on to explain that his son can now create an app using python! The father continues to say, at his age I just used to play outside my house for hours!!
I started wondering then, in fact it was good for his father that he was playing out in the sun instead of spending time in the house.
I am not saying, coding is bad or spending time on electronic device is bad. Coding is good as it helps in making one think more analytical and logical. It helps them to build their computational thinking, can develop a level of anticipation (as they anticipate errors) and will make them think structurally.
But for a kid up to his / her teens should be spending time in playing and the mandatory study, IMO. Allow them to explore what they like but also encourage them to day dream and be creative!
Let me try to summarise my thoughts around kids spending time playing in sun / dirt or dancing, drawing or run instead of coding in following 5 points:
- Kids should be a bit illogical. Do not take me wrong. But this is the age when they should think anything. And that is how they will learn many new things in the life and will also understand what all is not possible. Let the kid understand the concept of logic and illogical by his / her own experience.
- Kids should day-dream. Creativity of a child comes when he / she dreams about anything. It could be that he / she is flying with the help of an inflated bubble gum balloon. Such dreams are going to enable future crazy ideas (which could be a million $ idea)
- Kids needs cognitive skills more than the computational skills. Let the kids explore the beauty of thinking, reading, learning, remembering (build memories) in the most natural form. Let them engage themselves in pretend & play and do things that may sound crazy.
- Kids are naturally creative! Let that creativity not be bogged down by logic! Let them draw, paint, dance, make things, sing or whatever makes them unleash their power of creativity. Even while playing with a Lego set or Barbie, they are being creative and imaginative.
- Kids should play! I have said this before too but worth repeating as playing out in the sun is so very important. They run, they catch ball, they kick the ball or they may just cycle but these are very important things. Their hand eye coordination, their stamina, their competitive spirit (while playing a sport) and “social” abilities are developed.
DOC is way to go! Drawing (metaphor for being creative) over Coding. Ofcourse, there are many ways to be creative and not just drawing, but I am using drawing as one such example.
I myself being a software architect in the IT space since many years acknowledge the value of programming or coding and I do not discourage kids learning it at a young age but not in my opinion, while they are young they should be playing and exploiting their creative juices than being logical!
