White Hat Jr seems to be in Byju's business. But what business are Indian parents in?
India’s education system is broken at all levels - even in tech platforms
Note: This post wasn’t published till 3rd February, 2024 because I lost interest in it. It eventually got published (at the older date) because I didn’t want to just discard them. But it hasn’t been updated or completed.
If you are lucky as a child, you get the privilege of being born to sensible parents. But in majority of the cases in India, you are born to parents who force you into doing things as per their whims and fancies. They put you through horrible careeer choices and horrible marriages, and also permanently scar your psyche.
They don’t get blamed enough for any of it. And they get to feel like they’re the best parents ever.
(Just to be clear: I had okay parents who did better than most)
I woke up to reading this story on WhiteHat Jr bullying YouTubers for critical review of their ads and product. This is a sad sad thing.
Firstly, WhiteHat Jr is probably harmful for children. Learning things organically online, including learning how to code is one thing. But being put through a paid course to do that puts lots of pressure on a child to learn and perform. And that’s not how children best learn. There is a high chance that the kid you put through pressure to learn coding will end up hating coding. Or even worse, they will come out with permanently distorted understanding of how coding works. There are enough professional colleges in our country that builds bubbles around people to “help” them grow into adults who have no touch with the realities of the world. We probably don’t need a multi-million-dollar tech platform to do that at scale from a younger age.
Secondly, WhiteHat Jr is probably emotionally manipulating parents. I am not a parent and I haven’t had a conversation with a WhiteHat Jr salesman. You can watch some videos on WhiteHat Jr scamming people here. But I have many reasons to think that WhiteHat Jr maybe emotionally manipulating parents:
- It is a ripe topic to put in parents the fear of missing out. Who wouldn’t want their kid to grow up as coders?
- They have aggressive sales.
- When 1 & 2 comes together it is a natural thing that happens that the sales team (in order to meet their targets) use all the tactics they have access to including emotionally manipulating parents into thinking that they’re doing their child a crime by not subscribing to WhiteHat Jr.
- They heavily censor criticism.
It is point 4 that is the greatest proof to me that they’re doing this. Criticism is hated equally by human-gods, priests, and dictators. Criticism by one person makes others also doubt. And doubt foils their strength.