Like newrisedesigns, I learned programming first on a C64, when I was nine. I got as far into the manuals as it took to learn LOGO, Commodore BASIC and Simon BASIC, and how to make a bullet sound out of an ASCII string. Then my mom bought our first Macintosh: a Mac SE.

I used HyperCard, took other people's programs apart, and went from there. My computer lab teacher encouraged me, as did my 5th grade teacher, who gave me an 'A' for the Carmen Sandiego mock-up I did, even though it wouldn't run on the school's Mac Plus 'cause it could only read single sided disks, and my program took a whole 800k, double-sided one.

People learn best by doing what they like. Students ought to have access to programming tools and encouragement in that direction, so that nobody who would love programming misses their chance to discover it. But if a student doesn't like programming, or can't get his or her mind around it, it would be a mistake to try to teach them, even for the sake of teaching logic or problem solving. If a student is bad at math, the Establishment knows how to help him or her. It means that a core skill is missing, and they've dealt with that problem before. If a student is bad at programming, it may just be because it's boring to him or her, and nobody is going to know (at first) what to do about it.

Construction techniques, corporate management, and automotive design are all excellent fields which can be taught with the aim of teaching other things, just as programming can. They are also just as specific, and just as prone to finding a large number of students disinterested or unable to learn. That's why they're specialized, and usually taught in a post-high school setting. I think (much as I'd love it if every kid was a programmer) that the same thing is true of programming. I think the resources should be available to the interested, but to teach it as curriculum would be a mistake.

This largely holds true because in order to make programming a subject the impact of which on a student could be measured, the curriculum would have to be very Computer Science based. At that stage, it's mostly math, and has no visible benefits as I can see them. On the other hand, it might turn some otherwise potential programmers into computer haters.
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Love justice; desire mercy.

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