I used to be more involved in the educational space–I used to teach college-level classes and also participate&#x2F;organize&#x2F;mentor coding spaces for young adults–and I don&#x27;t think there is anything inherently wrong with the way that we teach programming.<p>I have come to believe, after years of teaching, that you cannot _teach_ curiosity, but you can help create environments that foster a students desire to learn and explore. As such, the point of education is to expose and empower children (people, really) to have the tools they need to explore and discover the things that they _want_ to understand and master. You really can&#x27;t _make_ someone enjoy &quot;x&quot;, where &quot;x&quot; is the passion of the teacher.<p>Programming, to me, is like writing, painting, or mathematics. In so much that it is a multi-faceted discipline. Coding is to writing as typing is to penmanship. There are _many_ reasons to write; from jotting down a grocery list to writing an epic novel, just as there are many reasons to code; from bulk automation&#x2F;text transformation to diving into deep artificial intelligence. Just as there are many reasons to paint, and many reasons to do math. The &quot;how&quot; is dependent on the &quot;why&quot;.<p>Most people don&#x27;t learn to mix oil paint simply for the joys of mixing oil paints, most people don&#x27;t learn penmanship simply because they long to see a well formed letterform. Few people learn the how to take the functional derivative, simply because. It&#x27;s a means to an end; they learn to do it because they need to express something _else_.<p>I don&#x27;t expect every child in my english classes to go on to write a great non-fiction masterpiece or an epic novel. In fact, most of them wont, but I _do_ think its important that they are exposed to the fundamental skills involved; penmanship, vocabulary, basic composition, in the event they _do_ want to write, or code, or compute, or paint, or whatever...<p>I think &quot;school&quot; is exposure to the mechanics, and individuals who desire more will seek out the rest.