i'm not an educator myself, but i work with a bunch of them.

i have to credit my public high school with at least teaching me to touch type (the keys on my keyboard at work are rearranged to spell my first name along the home row :) and it amazes me how many people i work with (programmers and webdesigners, people who work on computers all day every day and have for years) can't type on it without looking at their hands. it's somewhere around 95%. it blows my mind. anyway...)

the same mini class that tought me to type also covered basic word processor and spreadsheet use and had a QBASIC component that was basically a waste of my time. later i went to a math and science magnet school and got put in a C class. that class was actually on par with Calculus or Physics in terms of class time and had a really good instructor who did a remarkable job of teaching the underlying concepts of programming. so i can say that that class definately helped me. but i am quite aware that this class was a huge exception when compared to the rest of the k-12 education in this country.

one thing that might be important to keep in mind in discussions like this is that computers now are very different from when most of us were growing up and learning on them. with the 8086 i had as a kid and the apple ][s and C64s that my friends had, programming the computer was a large part of using them. even using the applications on them had a much steeper learning curve. without a mouse, you had to learn a huge set of key commands for any new program just to be able to get the basic stuff done. just learning to use one of the old word processors indoctrinated you into the whole process of having to understand the model that the program used and reading the manual (or at least looking really closely at the screen for hints on what to type). from there, learning a little BASIC and writing a simple program wasn't that big a step. now computers have become much different beasts. they're turning into extensions of TVs, VCRs, telephones and stereo systems. for most people, learning the very basics of clicking around Windows is enough that they can then use their computer as an entertainment and communication appliance and they really have no need or desire to use their computer as a tool for performing computations.

as computers get into schools more and more, the tendency seems to be to offer classes teaching people how to use word processors, web browsers, and spreadsheets. the whole 'computer literacy' thing. but it's almost unnecessary these days. especially the younger the kids. if you sit an eight year old in front of MS Word and leave them alone for 20 minutes, they'll have figured the whole program out.

so back in the day when 'computer literacy' actually implied some basic knowledge of programming, it may have been a laudable goal for schools to teach. now it has absolutely nothing to do with programming skills and has to be considered seperately. most importantly, you can no longer assume that just giving kids access to computers at an early age will somehow magically help them develop programming skills. that would be like assuming that children who watch a lot of TV will somehow pick up video editting skills through osmosis or something.

as far as actually teaching programming skills early on, there has been a real interest amongst those in the educational community in adding programming as a supplement to math education. in the k-8 world, the focus is entirely on fundamentals; reading, writing, arithmetic, and basic problem solving and thinking strategies. educators have very little interest in teaching real 'skills' until high school. once you go beyond the basic arithmetic stuff, the main benefits of studying math for most students are more in the area of developing problem solving skills and learning to think in a precise, logical, rational manner. even though most people will never use calculus once they get out of school, it changes how their minds work in broader ways that are useful outside mathematics. programming is almost exactly the same in that respect. if someone learns to program but never actually writes a line of code again, they've still learned skills for disecting a problem into smaller parts and solving those small problems independently. one of the big problems with math education is that math is by nature very abstract and many of the people who would benefit most from learning those problem solving skills can't handle the abstractness and get bored and distracted. programming has the advantage of having instant gratification. so the kids see that they can actually build useful and cool things themselves and they stay interested longer.

anders pearson