Not one of my four children has been taught to code. Yet three of them can, and one is extremely adept. For me, coding is on the event horizon of education. We still misunderstand how children learn and persist in seeking to quantify, quality check and present a body of information to be relayed to the next generation as if Gladstonian Liberalism were still the cutting edge of education planning. Coding blows this idea out of the water.
School often gets in the way of learning for far too many children, particularly those on the autism spectrum. Trying to define (let alone impose) a one-size-fits-all criteria is as sensible as attempting to find a universal means of delivery. This applies as much to parenting as to education. The world is progressing at an alarming rate with multiple platforms for children to learn from. What matters is not the method of delivery or learning but that children are enthused, involved and understanding what they participate in. The learning will just happen – you can't stop it.
I used to believe firmly that a "good education" was essential to do well, excellent teaching and practice the only route to success. Then I had a child who didn't fit the mould – and discovered I needed to learn about him first, allowing him to define his own modus operandi. My son has spent almost as much time out of school as in, and although he has undoubtedly received a "good education" at times, most of his knowledge is not from school. Interest piqued, he will devour books, research online and learn from YouTube lectures. He sees no boundaries and just feels his way forward – this "can-do" attitude has enabled him to partition harddrives, learn about quantum theory and master Elvish.
Watching his progress has been terrifying, heartwarming and hugely liberating. The day we permitted him protected but virtually unregulated access to screen time was akin to standing on a precipice 200m up with no harness, the antithesis of good parenting. No more thirty minute time limits as a reward for completing tasks! But it wasn't about removing sanctions and incentives, it was about embracing computer time as a valuable means of learning, interacting and offering real opportunities.
Initially our son immersed himself in gaming, Minecraft in particular. His older brother coded a website and server to host gameplay. On work experience at 15 he participated in a graduate programme, having his code adopted. He was asked to build a Minecraft map of his school as an orientation tool for new Year 7s – and his younger brother has similar aspirations.
Minecraft is unique. It encourages social skills and interaction as well as guiding players towards coding in order to fully engage with the game and personalise the experience. Constructing worlds also requires a basic understanding of GCSE-level physics; Redstone, which allows you to build electrical circuits, is based on logic gates, the building blocks of modern computers. There is a Minecraft Education edition which over 5,500 teachers in 40+ countries have used to teach subjects from STEM to languages, history and art. Some physicists actually speculate the universe behaves in a way similar to Minecraft. The blocks in the game are similar to chunks or quanta in quantum mechanics and many of the phenomena we see in the real world can be explained in the way Minecraft renders its world. There is definitely more to the game than digging and escaping Creepers.
Learning to code requires a degree of confidence and willingness to feel your way, which comes naturally to those with high functioning autism. Immersion is the only real method of "teaching" coding, and it's this immersion that children on the autism spectrum find so calming. Those with ASD are typically anxious, working in parallel on several ideas, thoughts and problems at once. Autistic people may seem single-minded – but that extreme focus is usually to drown out this unbearable overloading. It's a coping mechanism.
If we continue to use computer time as a carrot, rather than an integral tool for learning that children can learn to use appropriately we straitjacket the next generation in an anachronistic bubble. We must teach children to be critical and analytical instead. There's a huge difference between playing a simple app game for two hours and trying to code a Minecraft "Mod". Not all games are equal. The most important scientific breakthroughs are made when normal constraints are removed, where we don't even know the problem, let alone how to reach the solution.
Education needs to be flexible and future-proof – we must equip children for the demands of tomorrow so they can become independent thinkers and learners. But this involves more guidance and less imparting of knowledge – and that's true of parenting too.