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I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I read the referenced article. Scratch is one of the mainstays (with Python, for older, more advanced kids) of https://www.codeclub.org.uk/ and has been for 4/5 years, at least.

We also teach it as part of Raspberry Pi Jams: https://www.raspberrypi.org/ja... as well as assorted hardware and robotics projects based on the Raspberry PI.

Most of this is volunteer supported. I've just finished a year in a local primary, that's probably 1st to 5th grade in the US system. There's a little more of this in the US now, go find some, it's fun. And I agree, not every kid will want to progress, but this is a good way of dipping toes in and finding out.

Agree. I volunteer 'teach' https://www.codeclub.org.uk/ in the UK. The main article is true, not the teacher's fault, the government moved the focus from ICT [learning Word, learning Excel] to computing very quickly. This is a great idea because we're back to 'creation' as in the days of BASIC games rather than consumption.

But it's a human enterprise and YMMV, the teachers and the pupils will vary in ability and motivation. I live in one of the poorer parts of London and any kids that 'want' this may have a good future. They can't all be football or hip-hop stars. Secondly there's an initiative called Computing at School http://www.computingatschool.o... that promotes computational thinking. Even if you don't program, some of the problem solving techniques are universally applicable.

So one can find a lot to moan about, but there's a lot of promise/fun in this. I wrote my first program in about 1966 [FORTRAN on a mainframe] and I still enjoy it, in the UK that makes me [what they call] a 'sad' person.

Yes, I agree. I've worked on/off as contractor for the BBC in the last few years. However, since I spend my time dissing them [without anonymity] I doubt that's still an option. The BBC seems to have whole departments labeled Wheel-Reinvention [Squarish Lab]. The last thing that went south was the Digital Media Initiative, after a multi-million pound failure this was renamed Don't Mention It.

That said, this thing is a brain-dead toylet [as opposed to toilet, a different, bigger, quite useful thing] born of Not-Invented-Here. I volunteer teach Code Club: https://www.codeclub.org.uk/ and this just complicates matters as a distraction. It won't run Scratch [Raspberry Pi will] or the sort-of of processing [as I understand it] that the Arduino will. It's not a progression in any sense, can't take expansions [as can Pi, as can Arduino].

My 'hope' was that it would make a good wearable, but as I currently understand, it's not really good for that either. Lilypad is probably better. Like most Brits, I really value the BBC, but it has lost its way somewhat at the moment.

Thanks, great essay. I was lucky enough to do public school [that's a private fee-paying 'prep' school for those in the US, it has a very unhelpful name] and I got to write FORTRAN program in 1965. We ran it on a mainframe in a steel mill in a nearby town. That mill has, of course. closed now.

Secondly I and a pretty-much-genius friend built OSTEC, Oundle School Transistorised Electronic Computer, something that was pretty much just a full adder and a bit of core-store [ferrite core, they still use it in space]. It had a backplane and [fairly standardised] printed circuits that I etched with ferric chloride. I also etched a number of shirts, to the disgust of my mother.

I'm really happy that 'proper' computing seems to be coming back with Arduino, Pi and Scratch. At time of writing I've just come back from a local school where we're just starting a Code Club: https://www.codeclub.org.uk/ So I feel that things are picking up a little, people are, at least, aware that we've been neglecting science and technology for quite a while.

The worry I have left is that education should be about human potential not just about 'jobs', commerce is lobbying hard, so expensive to train people, so they prefer school to output pre-trained/compliant workers with low expectations. Go figure.

That's why the Raspberry Pi is part of an ecosystem including stuff like Code Club,