Australian Schools To Ditch History And Geography For Coding

Digging back into my childhood memories, I remember hating history and geography in school. It’s a personal thing and I remember some of my friends really enjoying the two subjects. The Federal Government recently decided to scrap them both as core subjects in favour of teaching coding to kids. I’m all for it, but how do you feel about the changes?

Children playing Minecraft picture from Getty Images

It is said that teaching children history is important so they can learn from the mistakes of people in the past, which will help them to develop sound decision-making and judgement skills. Geography… I’m not exactly sure why this needs to be taught, so let’s just gloss over it.

According to a report by The Australian, the Government has endorsed a new school curriculum that scraps history and geography as compulsory subjects and bringing in coding classes instead. This will see students from as young as Year 5 learning about computer coding.

The move makes sense given how pervasive technology is in our lives and practically every profession requires you to demonstrate some kind of computer skills. Australia is also suffering from a “brain drain” where we’re losing technology talents to overseas companies, leading to a skills shortage in the IT space.

Equipping children with advanced computer skills early could secure them a bright future in a world which is becoming more high tech. This is something that other countries like the US and UK are already doing.

But how do you feel about this change in curriculum? Are we missing a trick here by not teaching kids history and geography? Let us know in the comments.

[Via Business Insider Australia]


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