Exclusive | China’s tiger moms (and dads) drive demand for online education
STEM education is the next big thing in China after learning English amid the country’s push to become a global powerhouse in artificial intelligence
For a five year old, Wu Tianye has a lot on her plate. Besides her regular kindergarten classes, she practises ice skating to keep fit, is learning painting and music to develop an artistic side, and regularly chats online with a US-based teacher to maintain her American-accented English.
As if that was not enough, her father has squeezed another activity into her busy schedule – a STEM course designed to teach the basics of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Costing 200 yuan (US$30) per session, the course combines Lego building blocks with software-based projects so children can do their own programming and build functional toy robots and machines.
“I don’t expect my daughter to make a living by coding in the future, but I want to prepare her for a world where humans will inevitably work with robots and interact with machines. It will be the top skill for the era of artificial intelligence,” said the father, Wu Yunhe, who works in advertising in China’s capital of Beijing.
STEM education was created in the United States but has become increasingly popular in China as Chinese “tiger parents” spend what it takes to give their children a head start in computer science amid the country’s national drive for worldwide domination in technology fields ranging from big data to artificial intelligence.