Enriching Education: Benefits of Coding (More than STEM)

Originally published by CodeWizardsHQ

 Most people associate coding with math, science, and technology, but did you know that learning to code can help kids in other subjects in school, too? 

Language Arts

Clean code is good code, for a variety of reasons. When code is written clearly, it is easier to make changes when necessary, and succinct and clear code often will run quicker and with fewer errors. As such, learning to pay attention to the way code is written is an important skill for coders.

That attention to clarity transfers extremely well into Language Arts. In writing, just as in coding, making sure that your arguments are clearly worded and succinct is important for ensuring that your writing has the desired impact.

Foreign Language

When learning a foreign language, it’s about practicing the rules of the language, or the grammar. Though it might not always seem that way, those rules are fairly consistent, and part of many foreign language classes is diagramming out the different ways parts go together. 

Learning to code works in the same way. It’s paying close attention to how the different parts of the code work together to make a larger, cohesive whole. Without a doubt, the pattern recognition skills learned through coding are super helpful in learning a foreign language.

Music and Art

Coding, at its core, is an extremely creative activity. The lines of code being written are the coder’s paintbrush, with which they create their art, but coding itself is taking an idea and making it a reality. It’s about creating something new using the materials at hand, or, like a symphony, it can be taking pre-existing ideas and blending them together to make something new.

Learning to code stretches the same creative mental muscles, and gives students practice at coming up with new ways to look at things.

Learn more about how coding helps kids at school and check out our upcoming coding classes for elementary, middle, and high school.