White Hat Junior : Pros & Cons
This rapid pace of automation has intensified the need for skilling and reskilling of the workforce in deeptech technologies. For every 10 new jobs created by artificial intelligence, at least 100 jobs are being made obsolete. These days, the most attractive fields for tech professionals are machine learning, AI, robotics and deeptech.
Reports even predict that 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that do not even exist yet.
The Mumbai-based edutech startup has been facing flak on social for its advertisement across TV and digital platforms. It also invited outrage of parents and some tech experts.
Founded in 2018, WhiteHat Jr is an ed-tech platform that teaches students coding through one-on-one video classes with instructors. The startup has been in news ever since EdTech unicorn BYJU’S acquired it for USD 300 million.
Founded in 2018 by Karan Bajaj, WhiteHat Jr offers AI courses for children aged six to 14 years. WhiteHat Jr aims to empower children so that they view themselves as creators.
The app helps children learn computer programming and encourages them to create games, animations, applications and more. The start-up works with a live one-on-one online teaching format and a thoroughly researched curriculum. The subjects range from data structure, app and game development to machine learning and space technology.
It offers four levels of courses -- beginner, intermediate, advanced and professional -- for students in grades 1-12. The Mumbai-based startup currently has over 7,000 teachers on its platform.
Byju’s, which is valued at USD 8 billion per an independent report, said coding is fast emerging as a key skill for the future and the acquisition will help it expand offerings in the US and India. Byju’s will make significant investments in WhiteHat’s technology platform and product innovation, while expanding the teacher base to cater to demand from new markets, the statement said.
Recently, WhiteHat Jr said it is ramping up its women-only teacher base in India, adding about 220 teachers a day and plans to have about 20,000 educators on its platform by year end. The ongoing ramp-up is to match the growing base of students across multiple countries including India, the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, a statement said
Over the past month, a section of social media users has been busy trolling WhiteHat Jr - the education technology startup that was recently acquired by Byju's in a $300 million all-cash deal - for bombarding users with advertisements across TV and digital platforms.
The constant exposure to advertisements by WhiteHat Jr, which teaches coding to school students online, has turned into a nuisance, they have pointed out in the most creative of ways across social networks, predominantly on Twitter.
Online users have also gone to the extent of commenting on the social media posts of actor Sonu Sood - one of the celebrities endorsing the platform in its promotional campaigns - asking him to request WhiteHat Jr folks to push fewer ads across media channels.
Be it the advantage that our education system gives to rote learning or the fact that it is so unidimensional that we fail to think anything beyond doctor, engineers or chartered accountants, it would be stating the obvious that our education system needs a major overhaul.
The parental ambition that seeps inside children and makes them dream about IIT from as early as class 9 which is 3 years before they will actually give the exam, has fuelled a 5000 crore coaching industry in a small Rajasthan town called Kota and that contributes just 10% of the overall applications that competitive exams for engineering and medical receive from across the country for a handful of seats.
Naturally, this pressure, importance and glorification of competitive exams will have it’s alarming side effects. As per the latest data compiled by NCB, 28 students in India are succumbing to pressures of education system every day and taking their lives which is no short of an epidemic.
Given the above cultural context, we expect new-age brands and startups to be a bit more responsible, progressive and forward when it comes to their communication.
The ad shows parents proudly overlooking a chaotic scene of investors fighting to invest in Chintu’s app, coding for which he learned on White Hat Jr.
In a day and age, where the emphasis has to be placed on the joy of learning, letting children be children and not be crowded with worldly ambitions of earning money prematurely, we are shown parents already dreaming of their child to get funding for an app that he will possibly develop because of White Hat Jr. Instead of encouraging them to make the world a better place by finding solutions that solve problems, enjoying the process of learning, just how you would enjoy a sport, we are putting both parents and kids in a race to see who will become a coder with the highest pay package.
This ad is so tone-deaf that it could possibly be considered as the “Fair and Lovely” equivalent of our times saying almost the same message that you can earn that job or succeed in life once you have that glow of fairness on your face.
At a time when India is the most depressed country in the world, is it okay to introduce six-year-olds to deeptech education and pile on pressure? Psychological concerns such as behavioural issues and suicides are on the rise among Indian students. National Crime Records Bureau statistics show that one student commits suicide every hour in India due to the pressure of performance.
Are we headed towards a world with vocabulary flashcards for toddlers and coaching classes before walking?
The problem does not stop at the above communication. The company targets the below ads to parents with examples of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Bill Gates, without their explicit consent to drive home the point that they all started coding early and see how they are all running multi-billion-dollar companies, which is a problematic expectation setting at so many levels.
If you ask coders, they will agree that they consider coding to be an art, but coding = money and hence children should learn to code is not setting the right precedent if we want it to be an important part of the curriculum like art, sports or physical education is.
This need to equate everything to potential money-spinners need to go away.
Just how the business of fairness creams will continue to be sold on making people “fair” until a systemic change happens in our belief system that you don’t need to be fair to get a job, gain confidence or get married, similarly until we start looking at pursuit of education as an investment opportunity this type of communication will continue to resonate and perform for the target audience it is intended for.
What do the experts think?
Johnny Castro, a child development expert and teacher preparation faculty member at Brookhaven College in Farmers Branch/Dallas, TX, tells GoodCall that he emphatically opposes teaching kids to code. “Let children play and enjoy childhood – we do not need to push down the ‘career’ or interest in computer programming until the child is actually closer to 15 or 16 years old.”
Instead, Castro believes it is more important for children to explore all the various areas and opportunities in math, science, and other fields “before they become experts” in a particular area. “Computer coding is far too advanced and something that sounds like adults externalizing that ‘children can learn to do this and I would have loved to do this as a child.’”
While kids may be interested in computer games and robotics, Castro warns against interpreting this as a signal to get them career ready. “The more open-ended and interactive math, science, and computer technology activities are, the better for the child’s learning and sustained interest,” he says.
But what about the studies that show kids are better able to absorb new information at an early age? Margaret Leary, Ph.D., chair and director of curriculum at the National CyberWatch Center, is a networking cyber person so she does not code as a profession. However, Leary tells GoodCall that typically around the age of 2 and then again around the age of 19 or 20, young brains are more conducive to learning new languages.
Does this mean that children should start learning to code in the crib? Not exactly. Leary continues, “Studies have shown that every 2 years, 60% of our technical skills become obsolete, so any programming languages learned 5 or 6 years ago are unlikely to be in use after that time.” That’s not the only issue. “I would even contend that some studies show that we are shifting from left-brain functions on which traditional programming has relied, to right-brained functions, so it will be interesting to see how this impacts the discipline,” Leary says.
Jim Taylor, PhD, author of Raising Generation Tech: Preparing Your Child for a Media-Fuelled World, has written on this subject and he’s against coding camps. Taylor tells GoodCall that he is not a big fan of early coding in any setting. “Coding is so popular because parents are afraid that if their kids aren’t on the tech train early, they will be left off of the train forever.” While he does believe that there is a time and place to learn to code, Taylor does not think early coding is the answer. “Coding is a box, in terms of thinking; it is a beautiful box, it is an elegant box, but it is still a box with limited options.”
And contrary to what parents may think, Taylor argues that learning to code at a young age isn’t the key to success. “What will make kids successful in this tech-driven world is whether they can think – creatively, innovatively, and expansively – and that is accomplished through free, unstructured play.”
Taylor also shares Leary’s sentiment that what might be good now in terms of coding may not be relevant in the future since technology is advancing so rapidly. “And because kids grow up in a tech-dominated world, they’re going to have tech skills,” Taylor says. “It’s not that complicated; a lot of great coders learned as adults.”
Screen time is another issue that Taylor has with teaching kids to code. He believes that they already spend too much time in front of computer screens, and coding camps add additional screen time that takes away from other activities.
“It’s a matter of opportunity costs – time spent in one area is time not spent in a better area,” Taylor explains. “ If kids are coding, they’re not exercising, interacting with other people, doing their math, and any number of other more beneficial activities.”
So what’s driving the “teach kids to code” trend?
As Castro alluded to above, sometimes the parents get carried away when their small children express interest in technology, and they don’t want their kids to get left behind in the technical revolution. Taylor believes parents are fearful that if their kids don’t learn to code, they will not be able to support themselves. But he also believes there are other driving forces. “There is a coding industrial complex where it’s a way to make money for companies,” Taylor says. “Technology is the solution du jour for our education ails, even though there’s no research that it improves learning.”
And that’s why Taylor believes that parents are putting tablets and technology in the hands of 5-year-olds. “The kids are learning a simple language that has no relation to the type of skills they will need when they grow up.”
But isn’t earlier always better? Apparently not, at least not to Taylor. If kids have a desire to learn coding when they get to high school, he says that is plenty of time. “Brain surgeons don’t start learning as children, neither do lawyers or astrophysicists – and if it’s not necessary for kids to attend brain surgery camps, why is coding different?”
Parents should just step back, take a deep breath, get perspective, and send their kids outside.
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