Children keen to grasp opportunities that help reveal the code to success

BEIJING－A primary school student from Shanghai, nicknamed Vita, has garnered some 220,000 subscribers on a popular Chinese video-sharing platform. The 9-year-old creates educational videos about computer programming and has posted dozens on the platform, with his video series receiving over 4 million views in China, home to the largest online community in the world.

He is one of a generation that is not unfamiliar with artificial intelligence. In an era of exponential technological growth, programming is deemed a necessary skill, akin to speaking English.

He started learning to program at just 5 years old, designing a countdown app with the help of his father at age 6, even before graduating from kindergarten. He can now code simple games on his own.

Vita studies coding in school and is often helped in his pursuit of programming knowledge by his father Zhou Ziheng at home.

Some elementary schools in first-tier cities and coastal provinces, such as Beijing and Jiangsu, offer information technology courses.

Guantong Education has been providing AI learning facilities to more than 1,000 schools around Jiangsu province. Many parents, however, see the class hours and extent of the curriculum as limited, according to the company's manager Liu Chang. Therefore, parents choose to buy online programming courses for their children, or even send them to after-school classes and early education institutions, Liu adds.

Additionally, a range of programming apps for children, designed for use on mobile devices, are also available. The online lecturers guide children through drag-and-drop graphic modules on tablets to design animated effects.

The graphic modules can help children intuitively experience the operation method of a computer, says Du Zide, secretary-general of the China Computer Federation.

The age of children learning computer programming in China ranges from 3 to 19. According to a report by Analysys, an internet data analysis service provider, the transaction scale of the children's programming market reached 24.8 billion yuan ($3.83 billion) in 2018 and 25.7 billion yuan in 2019.

A total of 91.7 percent of Chinese primary and middle school students showed a willingness to learn about AI, according to an AI popularization education report released by the China Association of Children's Science Instructors in 2018.

In 2017, the State Council issued a development plan for the next generation of AI, pledging to gradually promote programming education, offer AI-related courses at middle and elementary schools, and encourage the development and promotion of programming-related teaching software and games.

Programming and computing systems are largely contributing to the modernized world. In today's China, rice cookers, speakers, and even traffic lights have all become "smart" with the help of AI. The development of AI technology has changed young people's perception of the world.

Vita used to be curious about the parking lot system. His father Zhou says: "Whenever I pay the parking fee using a mini-program on my phone, Vita would be intrigued by how the license plate recognition system recognizes the plate and the car park barrier lifts."

Actually, the process is completed using a neural network algorithm, explains Zhou, adding that he believes a smarter world will influence his son's learning process.

"The study of programming can help children learn the operation logic of devices and understand how society works in a brand-new way," Zhou says.

China is not the only country with a growing AI generation. In Britain, computer programming is a compulsory course for children above 5 years of age. France has included programming as an elective course in primary education. In China, some middle and primary schools have included programming ability in children's assessment standards.

Zhou Cenyao, a mother of two in Beijing, says: "We expect programming to improve children's abilities in abstract thinking, information sorting, communication and spatial thinking, rather than cultivating them into professional programmers."

Some believe that the popularization of programming in China is rooted in peer pressure and conformity of parents.

Zhao Yu, an information technology teacher at an elementary school in Beijing, says: "It cannot stem from parents' anxiety about their children's growth.

"During the compulsory education and the pre-school period, AI or programming should be introduced to cultivate children's interests."

Tomorrow Advancing Life, an education and technology enterprise in China, suggests parents introduce AI-related courses to children after they are 7 years old. AI is a complicated subject and contains multidisciplinary knowledge including math, physics, computing, linguistics, behavioral science, cognitive science and information science.

If children do not have enough prior knowledge, their confidence and interest in studying information technology further would be lost, says Zhao. "There are other ways to improve children's logical thinking before the third grade at elementary school. Board games, tangram and jigsaw puzzles could be good choices."

For primary and secondary school students, as well as preschool children, math, reading, writing and aesthetics are still vital, says Du, adding that abilities in these areas are fundamental for cognizing the world.

Xinhua