Matthew, Seven, Computer Literate

I was tasked to take my 7 year old nephew Matthew to school last Monday. While I waited for him to finish his oatmeal, I went through the things on his backpack, and picked up his computer textbook. I was actually surprised to find topics I was taught later than he was, because back then, most schools didn’t have computer subjects until the intermediate level. I didn’t even use a computer textbook then.

My cousin told me that Matthew has had computer for a subject since he was in Preparatory, and it already included hands-on instruction. They mostly played games then, though. But still, they were made aware of technology that early.

The computer hardware drawing on the first chapter of his book wasn’t that different from what my Grade Five computer instructor posted on our whiteboard then, except that the book no longer indicated a floppy disk drive in the CPU, but had an arrow instead pointing to a USB port. There was a drawing of a thumb drive as well. The drawing wasn’t limited to a desktop anymore either, as there was also a picture of a laptop with its basic parts identified. The book was also to teach Matthew how to create documents, how to save them, even how to delete them; things I didn’t learn at age 7.

Out of curiosity, I skimmed through Matthew’s sister’s book. Third year high school students are now being taught basic programming and web design. She should, after all, know how to add oomph to her Multiply page.

There really seems to be no stopping the technological age. It’s a good thing education decided to assist.