To sum up, there are several reasons:
Parents: There is too little information about children's programming, which leads some parents to know little about children's programming. This is especially true for parents who are not IT majors. In addition, the popularity of programming courses in China is not great, and their status is not as good as that of languages, mathematics and foreign languages, which can directly reflect their achievements.
School: Programming education needs a lot of investment, the effect is not guaranteed, and it is still in a secondary position compared with cultural classes. However, some school leaders are forward-looking. They offer information science courses to students so that they can learn programming from an early age. As far as I know, programming education has been incorporated into the curriculum system of Zhejiang Province.
Teacher: Some teachers still stick to the concept of "the first place in culture class" and think that programming may take up children's study time. In addition, not all children will get good grades when learning programming, and it is even more difficult to participate in NOIP.
Geographical aspect: Some economically developed areas can receive the latest information and world trends, which also affects parents' decision-making. Compared with first-tier cities, parents in third-and fourth-tier cities have not realized the importance of programming. The data shows that Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have the most users.
Thankfully, now more and more people realize the importance of programming to children. But most people still think of complexity, boredom, coding and high salary when they talk about programming. In fact, children learn programming more to cultivate their own abstract logical thinking, teamwork ability, innovation, self-study and other abilities. You don't have to be a programmer to learn programming.
First, abstract logical thinking
Another important factor affecting academic performance is thinking ability. Those children who fall behind in the eighth grade often start to fall behind obviously in the fourth grade. In fact, the reason why these children began to fall behind at this time is precisely because their thinking development has not kept pace with their peers. Psychological research shows that children's thinking is dominated by figurative thinking in early childhood, and enters the stage of image logic thinking in childhood, and the transition from image thinking to abstract logic thinking is about ten years old (generally in the fourth grade). If the children's thinking develops smoothly during this period, their grades will not be affected, and they will be more relaxed in future study. And if the development of thinking is blocked, it will seriously affect academic performance. Therefore, it is particularly important to grasp this turning point in children's thinking development. This task used to fall on mathematics and other subjects. Although these subjects can play an excessive guiding role in students' way of thinking to a certain extent, there is still a big gap compared with programming teaching, especially the more successful programming software teaching such as scarch. When programming, commands are written, but visible actions are generated, which can well link image thinking with abstract thinking. What you think is what you see, and what you see is what you get. This is an excellent practice of changing the way of thinking.
Second, teamwork ability.
Most of the students studying at this stage are "Xin Wei alone", and at home they are "Little Emperor" and "Little Princess". Family members revolve around these "little suns", which breeds the habit of being spoiled. They only know how to learn and don't know how to pay. Many students are unsociable, selfish and unsociable. With the growth of grade, primary school students begin to have the psychology of competition, and they have to compete in everything, sometimes even to the point of incompatibility, which is unfavorable to students' future development. A person's strength is insignificant, and only by integrating into the collective can his personal creation be developed. As Marx said: "Only in the collective can individuals acquire the means to develop their all-round talents." And programming teaching can be very good.
In order to closely connect a group or a class of students, a lot of program code needs to be written in dozens or even thousands of lines. Such a task is almost impossible for one person to complete in a short time, but it is feasible to disperse to a team.
To accomplish this task, everyone in the team needs to be involved. Cooperation should be intimate, division of labor should be meticulous, and overall planning should be reasonable. The completion of a large-scale program means the formation of a qualified team. More importantly, with the popularity of the Internet, students can not only cooperate with real classmates, but also collaborate with friends on the other side of the ocean to complete their creations, which can stimulate students' recognition of teamwork.
Third, the ability of innovation and self-study.
Children's programming course can not only cultivate children's logical thinking ability, but also help children's innovation ability, problem-solving ability, self-expression ability and self-learning ability in the whole programming process, which is exactly the necessary skills that children need today. Resnick, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that learning programming is very helpful whether it is to understand extremely complex systems, such as how an economy works or to solve problems in a step-by-step way. It can not only train children's ability to solve problems, but also help them express themselves.
Finally, I want to say that children's programming should not be utilitarian exam-oriented learning. The purpose of learning is to cultivate children's abstract thinking ability and exercise their independent thinking ability. Of course, there are indeed many schools that have participated in programming-related competitions: award-winning children like NOIP are more popular. If children are interested in this aspect, why not let them study?
Children's programming experience, please click below for details.