A genuine opinion on #whitehatjunior
To all the parents out there, why you should listen to me? Because My own kid is taking the classes (30+ already completed) and I am running a Software company myself.
Let’s jump to the conclusion for those who don’t have time to read the whole story.
The education they provide is indeed helpful for the children and their future. Believe me, you don’t have anything to lose here. If you can afford the course go for it. But no point to enrol, just because you feel your kid will be left behind. Enrol only if they are getting free times since they can’t do any other extracurricular activities due to COVID, this is something that can help their minds to occupy and help in future.
However, I am completely against their advertising and marketing campaign. Indeed it is brainwashing parents and creates a false impression. No kids will be able to produce a production-level code after completing their curriculum.
It’s just designed for a basic understanding of coding and clears out concepts which I think is crucial for kids. But claiming that it helps the kid to land a job is completely insane. Also, don’t fall for their marketing campaign to get a free scholarship for a lifetime. Only a handful of kids who are gifted and has devoted to coding may get some offer or scholarship that too from companies who wants to just use them for their own publicity.
So here is how it started for me and how it is going till now.
I have seen what’s app post of a friend showing a certificate completion of whitehatjr for Game Development.
I was surprised at how a 7-year-old can be a game developer. So I inquired it myself checked their curriculum which seems promising also get feedback from parents whose kids are learning through it. Everything looks positive and there is nothing to lose except the money 😛 so I decided to enrol my 8-year-old to start the course.
It started well the classes are designed such that a young kid can easily understand and do the coding. (It’s not an actual coding that programmer does, it is a blocky language which helps kids to use the blocks which they can drag and drop to code). Besides that, they also provide a pdf for every project that gives a step by step instructions with sufficient hints so kids can follow it and complete a project. They give enough time to submit the project too. However, I agree that non-technical parents may find it hard to help the kids completing the project. But the kids can always ask their mentor in case of any difficulties.
They have a limit of a maximum of 3 classes per week and there is no minimum threshold so kids can learn by their own pace. They have also designed the quizzes to revise the concept of past classes. All in all, I don’t see my kid is getting exhausted. But at the same time, I also see he is not going to be a professional coder out of it. It indeed provides a platform to be a coder in future though.
So that’s it. I hope you can make a better decision now on whether to enrol your kids for coding class now or not. Also, don’t listen to all those haters who are claiming the whitehatjr isn’t providing any quality education. I personally recommend them.
But at the same time, I request to whitehatjr to stop those nonsense ads you are serving to parents and make some meaningful Ads which genuinely provide insight on what you do. I believe in teaching coding to young minds and will continue to support it.
