Kids are going back to school in droves this week. Hair styles, funky jeans, and nerves will make for great embarrassing photos (and stories) in 20 years. In the U S of A our first graders are armed with pencils to learn how to write and draw. That’s cute, when you consider that, first graders going to public schools in Estonia will now be required to start learning to code. The program, dubbed ProgeTiiger, is aimed at getting Estonian youth to be the makers, not just consumers, of technology. Venture Beat writes:

ProgreTiiger education will start with students in the first grade, which starts around the age of 7 or 8 for Estonians. The compsci education will continue through a student’s final years of public school, around age 16. Teachers are being trained on the new skills, and private sector IT companies are also getting involved, which makes sense, given that these entities will likely end up being the long-term beneficiaries of a technologically literate populace.

Hopefully these kids will grow up in the footsteps of @IlvesToomas (aka the president of Estonia), and active tweeter and tech enthusiast, and not follow the path of other, more nefarious, countrymen who were recently made headlines after one of the biggest Internet malware spreading crews was brought down last year.