Children and Scientific Technology
Toshiya Nakaguchi, Professor
Chiba University Center for Frontier Medical Engineering
Chiba University Graduate School of Engineering Department of Medical System Engineering
Chiba University Faculty of Engineering Department of Medical System Engineering
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I remember that when I was a child, my father would often bring strange machines home from work. They were large and white and covered in buttons. When I was in third grade, he brought home a PC-6001 computer. My father connected it to the television following the instructions and turned it on. It was all in English, so I had no idea what it said. When he connected a tape deck and performed a few more steps, some sort of image was displayed on the screen. My father, perhaps satisfied with what he had accomplished, said “I’ll pick up from there next time.” I don’t recall him ever touching the computer again. In the early 1980s computers were expensive. The blinding speed with which he grew tired of the computer, despite its high price, was something that ran in our family, so even for my technology-loving relatives, interest in the computer didn’t last long.
The computer sat unused for a while, but all of that changed when my seventh grade cousin came from Tokyo the next New Year. He entered a few lines of BASIC and showed me the animated lightning strike it produced. I remember it vividly—it was like the lightning had struck me. My life as a child computer enthusiast started then. I started reading a book about the BASIC programming language. I didn’t understand any of the explanations, but I entered any sample code I could find and ran it. I didn’t know how to save, so I typed in the programs I liked over and over again. Eventually, I discovered the existence of program magazines. They included game programs submitted by readers, with some programs being over 10 pages long. Although I didn’t understand the programs I was entering, I came to notice that there were certain patterns. I learned how to display things, perform keyboard entry, and play music instinctually, as patterns. This continued on for about two years, until one day I tried reading the BASIC programming book again and the BASIC grammar soaked right in.
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and programming education for children has become a hot topic. An immense amount of inventive educational materials for preschoolers have sprung up, such as computers and tablets, picture books to stimulate logical thinking, and robots which operate by stacking command blocks as if they were building blocks. These cutting-edge products are easier for small- and medium-sized venture companies to produce than large companies, and the new trend of crowd funding is giving rise to a stunning array of new STEM educational materials. When I imagine what it would have been like if these materials had been available to me when I was still a child, I grow excited and click the “Buy” button, telling myself that I’m buying the materials for my own daughter. She is five years old and still a bit young for STEM educational materials, but our house is already overflowing with them. The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has issued educational guidelines which include a mandate for programming education in elementary schools. These guidelines are expected to go into full effect by 2020.
I learned programming through many years of study, but children today are busier and unlikely to have the time to learn like I did. They are also exposed to a great deal more interesting stimuli than animated lightning strikes, so it wouldn’t have the same profound effect. Even if programming becomes part of compulsory education, I don’t think that everyone will become proficient in programming or logical thought. Computers and scientific technology are a part—sometimes a great part—of everyday life, and I believe that exposure to these technologies in their raw form at an early age is a move in the right direction. I’m often asked by other adults about how to get good at computers, but if your goal is just to be good at using computers as an end to itself, you will never be good at them. Instead, you will always be used by computers. In other words, it is important to think of computers and scientific technologies as tools and determine their possibilities. It is my hope that, through STEM and programming education, the future generation will become closer to scientific technologies and learn how to use them correctly.
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