Estonia's Kiddie Coders: Children Expected to Take Beginner Tech Classes More Regularly

When most of us were six years old, starting school was front of mind for us, right behind a juice box and maybe a brisk nap. But in Estonia, according to recent reports, six-year-olds are already looking to learn how to crunch code along with learning their ABCs.

Tiny Estonia, with a total population of just 1.3 million people, has been making surprising gains of late as a tech center of Eastern Europe, part of which is owing to the "ProgeTiiger" concept embodied by the Tiger Leap Foundation.

The idea is to get kids of all ages coding on at least some level starting this year. Naturally, the whole thing is at its beginning stages, but the end result is to attempt to produce an entire society of school-age children who have at least some coding capability and, thus, enhanced computer literacy.

The Tiger Leap Foundation's classes currently aren't mandatory, but look to combine some coding classes as part of the standard curriculum with some after-school "coding clubs" for those who are taking to the lessons and want a little extra training.

Given that Tiger Leap is actually a product of the current President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, and the education minister, Jaak Aaviksoo, from back in the late 90s, it's a safe bet this is a credible program with lots of potential benefits.

Some would say that Estonia's advancement as a technical powerhouse – Estonian coders were largely behind Skype, after all – is owed to its former status as part of the Soviet Union. Following the breakup of same, the newly-independent Estonian government set out to be a technologically advanced country, and that meant getting as many people involved in the concept as possible.

Tiger Leap, meanwhile, looks to just augment the ranks even further.

Moreover, some would even say that people who can code are better computer users in general, as they're capable of building some extra programs that they find they need, but aren't commercially available. Given that much of Estonia's banking is done online, and most of Estonia's government services are done online, as well as the robust private sector of technology-related workers, it's a safe bet that they've achieved their goal of being technologically advanced.

Programs like Tiger Leap only look to further cement that status, and make it certain that when the world thinks high technology, the world, at least eventually, thinks of Estonia.

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