It is probably economically motivated. Estonia, like many central and eastern European countries, is seeing strong relative growth in their technology sectors. Rhetoric, drawing, dancing & carpentry are not exactly as likely to drive the nation's economy in 2023 when these children graduate from school.
You cannot really predict the future. In the early 90s in my country (Bulgaria) there was an extreme need of accountants and many programmers emigrated (and we had massive amounts of engineers due to socialist planning). Now accountants are not in a short supply and programmers are relatively well paid.
My point is - you really cannot predict the future. Education is supposed to prepare you for life, whatever it may serve you, not to grant you a carrier.
I'm all for having a better education. And maybe a little programming literacy might be really useful. I just seriously hope the Estonian state doesn't expect its future generations to become a nation of programmers.
I think you may be drawing a fairly extreme conclusion from the article (or my comment). It's unlikely the Estonian government intends to breed a nation of programmers. At the same time, it's not exactly reckless to give school age children the necessary foundation to become developers should they so desire.
