Is Coding the Most Important Modern Language?

In this article, Andrew argues against relying on AI as a quick fix in education, instead advocating for teaching coding alongside literacy. He draws from his 1980s coding experience and modern educational resources to suggest that coding skills can enhance literacy development and provide valuable learning foundations.

The AI Hype in Education

I am not among those rushing to AI as the answer to every issue in education, because I think that’s often about wanting an easy answer and teaching isn’t meant to be easy. Learning happens when we’re grappling with something challenging.

We can’t leave fixing literacy to an AI magic wand. Instead, true innovation would be finding a way to support literacy that also helps to develop the digital skills our learners increasingly need.

The Case for Coding

The rush, if we must have one, should be to coding. Controversially perhaps, I think it’s more important than any modern language. And I think it could be enormously supportive of literacy.

A Personal Journey: Coding in the 1980s

In the 1980s, I would sit in my bedroom painstakingly copying lines of BASIC code from Amstrad Action magazine into the computer that was the centre of my universe. One single error, no matter how small the typo, would render the whole thing useless and I would have to start again. It was a brutal way of learning, but I have no doubt that the early reverence for syntax put me a step ahead in writing, leading me to study, and teach, and obsess about English.

The memory of coding also influenced my teaching practice. Internalising and iterating on high-quality exemplars was the foundation of my approach to literacy in the classroom, much as it was when I took those magazine pages as a scaffold to build my own games.

Rediscovering Coding in 2024

I recently returned to coding after decades away. It feels like the languages have grown in complexity, but it’s not as brutal and unforgiving as it was for eight-year-old me. In 2024, I have access to apps that are actually designed to teach programming languages like Python to eight year olds and above.

Modern Coding Education Resources

Over the months since picking up my old hobby, I’ve gathered quite a library of resources, from ‘Python for Dummies’ to ‘Learn Python the Hard Way’, and have dipped my toe in a number of apps, but nothing felt quite like a complete solution until I began evaluating coding-education resources designed for the classroom.

They can cover several bases at once, offering gamified micro-learning alongside the blank canvas of an online coding laboratory. I’ve played a burger-making game that gently introduces the importance of syntax and a robot game that gets you constructing logical sequences. While I’m sure 80s nostalgia isn’t a deliberate part of the design, I couldn’t help reflecting how playing Build a Better Burger or targeting my Big Trak at my siblings’ heels back then provided stealth foundations in both programming and literacy. Toys can teach us a great deal about learning.

Innovative Educational Technologies

A few years ago, Nintendo experimented with ‘Labo’, a series of cardboard kits that interact with the Switch console. You could build a cardboard piano, for example, with working keys that played corresponding notes through the Switch. Personally, I spent some happy lockdown hours piecing together a cardboard bazooka that worked with a virtual-reality homage to Hungry Hungry Hippos. It was wild. Sadly, it wasn’t very successful for Nintendo, but I never stopped thinking about the unrealised potential. It had even included its own visual programming environment, teasing limitless invention.

I have been delighted to find that there are edtech products bringing a fusion of Nintendo Labo, Meccano, and science fiction to classrooms. While it was a proud achievement even coding the BASIC to get my childhood Amstrad to talk to a dot-matrix printer, modern coding kits provide the potential for students to construct a real-life robot from plastic and electronic components, and then program it wirelessly, direct from a phone or tablet.

The Challenge and Reward of Learning to Code

I have to admit, despite modern advantages, I’m lagging behind eight-year-old me. He could knock out a text-adventure game in an afternoon, whereas I keep getting stuck in infinite loops.  I’m enjoying grappling with the challenge, but I’m not finding my return to coding easy. I know enough about AI to be aware that I could cheat and ask it to code a text adventure game for me in a matter of seconds. And I know enough about AI to be aware that’s only possible because another kid somewhere got really really good at coding. As an educator, I want to see a world full of kids getting really really good at stuff.

The Synergy of Coding and Literacy

Linking literacy and coding, if we want to be nerdy about it, is tautologous. They both mean the ability to understand and to be understood. They both provide crucial foundations to support other learning. Let’s put them both at the centre of our curriculum and stop looking for cheat codes.

By Andrew Otty, Codiplay