Oh boy. This one’s bizarre. Can someone tell the Prime Minister that learning code doesn’t mean you’re going to be sent into the mines at 11 years of age?
Image: Getty
After delivering a Budget focussed on building infrastructure and supporting small business, Prime Minister Tony Abbott probably doesn’t have his head in the game when it comes to answering questions about teaching code in schools.
Which is probably why he delivered this baffling response to a question about it during Parliamentary proceedings yesterday.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten asked the Prime Minister if he would support a plan to teach coding skills to primary and secondary students in Australia, to which Abbott replied:
“Let’s just understand exactly what the Leader of the Opposition has asked. He said that he wants primary school kids to be taught coding so they can get the jobs of the future. Does he want to send them all out to work at the age of 11? Is that what he wants to do? Seriously? Seriously?”
Wait, what?
Presumably the Prime Minister thinks that teaching kids to code means giving them the skills before immediately shipping them off to the code mines of Silicon Valley, rather than equipping them with the skills they need to build the next Facebook, Google or Apple. [Jason Clare MP]