According to Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, English may be a global language, but it’s more important to learn how to code.
“If I were a French student and I were 10 years old, I think it would be more important for me to learn coding than English,” Cook told French news outlet Konbini while in the country to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron, CNBC reports.
“This is a language that you can [use to] express yourself to 7 billion people in the world,” Cook said, adding that coding should be “required in every public school in the world” and should not be seen as a specialized skill.
“It’s not just for the computer scientists. It’s for all of us,” Cook said.
Acquiring coding skills makes financial sense, too. According to a report by job search network Glassdoor, more than one-third of high-paying jobs require some computer programming skills.
Last month, the Apple exec told Fortune about how the company developed the programming language Swift to encourage students of all ages to learn to code.
“All this curriculum stuff is free. Anybody can have it that wants it around the world. We’ve done it in multiple languages,” he said.