> Some of our target audiences are middle- and high-school students, some of whom have weak typing skills (we know from numerous workshops we run). Increasing even the raw number of characters is a real problem for them.

I certainly understand this argument, and I generally favour simple syntax over smart tools -- but how much of a difference would this make in an editor/IDE that automatically inserts the closing-tag? (you type case, the editor appends esac (but below the point you're typing)):

    1:   |   #your cursor at |

    2: case|
    
    3: case:
         |     # you hit enter or something, ready to fill in
       esac    # editor has closed block/statement

I imagine typing-skills isn't much of an issue when editing/copying text -- as opposed to typing in new code?