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Is Coding the New English? Why Every Child Is Being Taught to Code

  • Writer: Neha Kumari
    Neha Kumari
  • Jul 22
  • 4 min read
An illustration of a young child learning to code on a laptop, surrounded by icons like Python, HTML, and Scratch, with books, pencils, and digital screens showing code snippets — symbolizing how coding is becoming a foundational skill like English.
An illustration of a young child learning to code on a laptop, surrounded by icons like Python, HTML, and Scratch, with books, pencils, and digital screens showing code snippets — symbolizing how coding is becoming a foundational skill like English.

Over the past couple of years, a subtle yet effective transformation has occurred in classrooms across the globe, and that is integration of coding as early as kindergarten.


Parents are signing their children up to weekend coding bootcamps. Schools are adopting it as part of the fundamental curricula. And coding sites such as WhiteHat Jr., Code.org and Scratch are hot.


Then the question is: Is coding the new English? Well, is it so necessary? So let us analyze it.


Coding: Is it only a Skill or a New Literacy?


Coding can no longer be a technical code mastered by only software engineers anymore, but is now being viewed as a kind of literacy, a literacy like reading, writing, and speaking.


Live in an era of dominance by technology, and know an advantage of exploring the language behind it.


In the same way English will enable you to talk to humans, coding will also enable you to talk to the machine.


It is the digital age grammar.


So Why the Sudden Coding Craze?


It can be identified that there are several reasons that make coding the priority in contemporary schooling:


1. The use of technology is all over.

Code drives everything in your smartphone and even the traffic light at the corner of the road. The less we know about the functioning of tech and the more dependent we are on it, the more important the perception of its functioning turns out to be.


2. Job Market Requirements

The most-in-demand and the best-paid field needs knowledge of coding nowadays: app development, AI, robotics. Even the marketing, the financial, and design jobs are getting to be people who require tech-savvy individuals.


3. Logic, Building and Problem-Solving

Coding delivers structured way of thinking, decomposing large tasks into small, and resolving them one by one. This is a skill that is much wider than the realm of computers, even in the real world and occupation.


4. Global Movement

Nations such as US, UK and China have introduced mandatory coding in schools. Even India has implemented it as a part of new education policy (NEP) since Class 6.


What Business Have Children with It?


The way children scientifically learn to acquire language and recognize patterns until the age of 7 is how coding is an ideal early skill.


  • They consider it as a game not a job

  • They study logic without even caring about it

  • It enhances creativity since it enables them to create apps, games, and animations

  • Just as English is useful in telling a story, code is useful in digital story telling.


Similarities and differences of coding and English: Is it a fair comparison?


English is a worldwide spoken language. It creates possibilities in travel, business, education and communications.


On the contrary, the language behind the screen is coding. It is not a replacement of English but a supplement.


When humans use English so that they can communicate to each other, when humans interact with technology, they understand through coding.


No, then, coding does not replace English. But it is also becoming fundamental.


The Other Perks of Tech Career


Although a child may never end up becoming a software engineer, coding can provide:

Increased concentration and attention to detail


  • Increased levels of mathematical and logical problemsolving

  • Increased resilience (debugging teaches you why you should not give up!)

  • Back to source confidence building up something out of nothing

  • Inquisitive analytical thinking

  • It forms a generation of creators and not merely consumers.


The tools that make code fun


However learning to code does not involve looking at lines of text. New platforms are interesting and active:


  • Scratch: Allows children to build games and stories using drag-and-drop logic

  • Tynker: Cartoon and quiz based coding classes

  • Code.org: Provides free classes with the support of tech giants of the world

  • WhiteHat Jr.: Education in app and game development among children


Programming nowadays is like coloring with a coloring book; only it is supercharged.


What the Schools and the Parents ought to do ?


Schools must incorporate coding at an early stage instead of waiting till college or job level.


Not only in computer labs - but interdisciplinary.


  • Math: Instruction of logic on simple Python example

  • Science: Construct computer models in code

  • Arts: code digital animations or music


Parents may also empower the children through: Signing them up to online coding clubs


Allowing them to create games or simple websites


The culture of celebrating such small victories as bug fixing or creating a button


Technological Systems Have become a Culture of the Future


Previous self-driving cars, smart homes, medical robots, and artificial intelligence generated art- The future is coded.


The sooner kids are introduced to coding, the more assuredly they will be able to capture that future, and not be afraid of it.


As a matter of fact, as we may ask, why should everybody speak basic English?- so it is with code.


But Let us Not Overdo It


And the fact is that not all children have to become an coder. But at least every child needs to be nurtured with the chance to know about it.


Not all English speakers are imagining themselves to grow up and become novelists No one imagines that all coders too will grow up to be developers.


What is desired is to provide them with a new mindset, rather than a new profession (in case they desire it).


In Conclusion


Is coding the new English then?


Not exactly. It is indeed the emerging universal language- a passport to successfully living and functioning in the 21 st century.


The sooner they pick it up the more confidently they will be able to navigate in the world around them, the world/s that are more and more governed by the lines of codes.


Next time we will not be asking, “Do you know how to code?”


We will say to you - “What is it that you have created in code?”


📅 By News Anek Digital Desk | July 22, 2025








 
 
 

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