REPORTEDLY, a training agency in Wenjiao district, Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, has seen the scale of its computer programming class increase exponentially from dozens of students to tens of thousands in three years. China Daily reporter Li Yang comments:

In early 2017, the State Council sought to encourage computer programming education in primary and middle schools so as to boost the development of artificial intelligence. Which fired the starting gun for training agencies to scramble to provide such education while most schools were still waiting for the Education Ministry's not-yet-ready deployment.

The popularity of computer programming training is not limited to Hangzhou, it has become the most robust growth point in the extracurricular training market nationwide.

Yet a worrying phenomenon is that many trainees have just bid farewell to their toddler phase, and are too young to be learning programming skills.

It is noteworthy that, in most cases, it is parents who seat the minors behind monitors for hours, irrespective of whether the children have developed the necessary capability to study programming.

Ironically, the parents even claim that if their children cannot win prizes in the International Olympiad in Informatics－award winners are favorites among key universities－the training contributes to their intelligence.

But that plea has been heard many times before when large numbers of children were squeezed into extracurricular training classes customized for contestants of mathematic Olympics, as if all the kids are buried pearls that deserve a place in the crown of mathematics. While the truth is the difficult training exhausts most children's interests and curiosity in mathematics at an early age.

In fact, almost all final winners of the Olympiads in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and informatics are gifted children, and few of them are products of the weekend extracurricular training, which is nothing but a means to make money from parents desperate to ensure their children do not get left behind in the race for good jobs.

Pulling up seedlings will not help them grow up, but kill them instantly.