Why Schools Should Be Teaching Coding and UX

According to one estimate by American scholar Cathy Davidson, “65 percent of children entering grade school this year will end up working in careers that haven’t even been invented yet.” It’s hard to say today how accurate that estimate will be, but what I do know for sure is this: the jobs of tomorrow will require tech skills and the thinking processes that come with them.

So much of how we live our lives today—how we communicate, our forms of entertainment, how we work—has changed immensely in recent decades. Given the speed at which our society is evolving and the key role that technology plays in this evolution, it is essential that we equip kids today with the tech skills that they will need to thrive in the workplace of tomorrow. So where do we start?

Learning a Universal Language

Teaching coding is an excellent way to start building a strong foundation of tech skills in the next generation. Coding language is uniform and globally recognized (other than the syntax), which means that knowing how to code is an incredibly versatile skill that can take you down countless career paths.

In today’s digital world, I believe that learning coding is more valuable than learning another spoken language. I would love to see coding introduced in schools as a valid option for learning a second language. And the sooner students start learning it, the better. Introducing coding to students in grade school would help to stimulate their development by teaching them to think logically and systematically in line with strict protocols, while at the same time promoting creativity and innovation.

As highlighted in this article by The Atlantic, there are currently plenty of obstacles standing in the way of coding becoming a widely taught subject in public schools. These range from insufficient resources for computer equipment to inconsistent curricula across different jurisdictions. Yet there are even more good reasons why we should do our best to overcome these obstacles.

Fortunately, there are positive steps being taken in this direction: here in BC, for example, the provincial government recently announced plans to greatly expand the teaching of computer coding in schools throughout the province. This is excellent news and a promising sign of wider recognition of the value of coding.

Designing a Better Future

Another area of tech education that I believe would greatly benefit the next generation is user experience (UX) design and product design. So many aspects of our lives are touched and influenced by these areas of design in terms of the products and services that we interact with on a daily basis. At the same time, the quality of UX has become so high these days that anything less than perfect—in terms of speed, cost, quality or any other factor—is unacceptable to users.

While UX design and product design have evolved and gained prominence in the digital era, they are not exclusive to the digital world. You can certainly think of expertise in these areas of design as a form of tech skills, but the concepts and creative thinking behind exceptional UX and product design are broadly applicable far beyond the world of technology. Teachers looking for ways to develop critical thinking and problem-solving abilities in their students may be surprised at how well these areas of design align with their teaching objectives.

Teaching the next generation tech skills such as coding and UX design is not about turning every student into a computer programmer or web developer. Instead, it’s about providing them with foundational knowledge to better understand the world around them today and equipping them with the curiosity and innovative thinking needed to adapt to the yet-unknown realities of tomorrow.