Ask HN: How Could Schools Teach Programming?

<forKids> Based on my belief that programming is not something which should only be taught to those on the college track, programming could be taught as a vocation rather than an academic pursuit. In other words, rather than a one hour class with homework and labs - it could be taught in more of an all day studio type environment similar to the way electronics was traditionally taught in trade school certificate type programs.</forKids>

I've always thought that high school physics & algebra should be taught as computer game programming lessons.

This depends, what grades are we talking about?

I worked in a K-8 school where the computer teacher used Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu/) to teach programming in the lower grades.

What are the challenges you feel need to be overcome?

I think the biggest challenge is teacher knowledge. There just aren't many people in middle/high school classrooms that know anything about programming.

Scratch does look really cool for lower grades. I was more thinking of teaching actual production languages to high schoolers though.