News/Research

Ken Goldberg Quoted in NYT on Preparing Preschoolers for an Automated Economy

01 Aug, 2017

Ken Goldberg Quoted in NYT on Preparing Preschoolers for an Automated Economy

As technological advances increase automation, researchers and parents alike are exploring what crucial skills - human skills, such as empathy and resilience, and technical skills, such as programming - should be prioritized in children's early education?

According to a recently published New York Times article, for some parents, the answer is coding, at as early of an age as 2 years old. EECS chairman Ken Goldberg had this to say:

"It's a real misnomer that simply learning to code is the answer... We don't need everybody to be extremeley capable Python coders. It's a way of understandng what machines are good at and what they're not good at - that's something everybody needs to learn."

Read more about this evolving conversation over at the Times.