Every parent shares some confusion these days over the impact of technology on our children.
There are so many conflicting stories out there. We hear graduate salaries for IT jobs are approaching those for law and finance, and AI is reportedly jeopardising many traditional white-collar jobs at the same time. Meanwhile, some countries are choosing to ban smartphones for under-16s amid reports of children being blackmailed by social media predators.
So what are parents to do? Can we keep children safe from technology’s harms while helping them learn the skills they’ll need to succeed in the future?
Having spent 20 years working with school computing education and now as co-lead of STACS, a government-funded teacher association for Scottish computing teachers, I am deeply concerned with these questions. We believe the key to the conundrum is to separate the use of technology from being able to understand and create it. As many experts argue, including psychologist Jonathan Haidt, children should be off smartphones. Sound intellectual development requires them to be playing outdoors and socialising face-to-face, kept away from social media distractions and safeguarded against dangerous content online. However, while protecting children from technology's dangers, we must also prepare them for a future where digital technologies will be involved in virtually every aspect of their lives. The Industrial Revolution was based on automating physical processes. Today, economic prosperity depends on automating information processes.
Driving a car, checking out at a supermarket, even writing an essay: these are all information processes that have been or are being automated. We don't need everyone to be a software developer, but everyone should be able to spot opportunities for information automation, no matter their job or career.
This requires understanding of how technology works: crucial also for making informed decisions about computing technology like AI in our society.
That understanding develops from early exposure to principles underpinning the technology revolution: thinking about the world in terms of the information and processes involved. We lay important intellectual underpinnings in primary schools across the traditional sciences, maths, and the humanities; we need to do the same for computing science.
Scotland is well-placed to achieve this goal. We have a school computing science curriculum already in place from the early years. With the establishment of STACS in 2022, the Scottish Government has funded teachers to bring the computing science teacher community together, including primary and early years teachers, and to create high-quality classroom materials, most recently for primary schools. We aren’t there yet, though. While our and others’ research shows that computing science is a subject that can and should be learned by anyone, currently there are significant "attainment gaps". We need more girls, and children from a wider range of backgrounds, to take up the subject to help Scotland reach its potential as a tech leader. To achieve this, we need more consistent provision across primary and secondary schools.
Parents can help make it happen by talking to their children’s schools about their computing science provision. Materials developed by STACS can help get things going in primary schools to give secondary teachers a massive head start. Ask for more. Your children need it, and so does our society.
Quintin Cutts is Professor of Computer Science Education at the University of Glasgow’s School of Computing Science
Agenda is a column for outside contributors. Contact: agenda@theherald.co.uk
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here