I think you owe it to yourself, and perhaps to us, to understand and express why Squeak does not represent the perfect environment for pursuing the kind of educational ideas that you tend to express. If it in fact does not.
In fact I'm better at using Python to express what I want to express, about mathematics. Hence my Pythonic Mathematics, my OSCON talks about it, my trip to Sweden to explain it and so forth. I was simply never was a SmallTalk guy, much though I treasure OO. What I see in Squeakland is a branch point to entirely other genres of experience, but with OO in common, plus a willingness to control puppets (assets I'm hoping to add, via Mono/.NET, to Python's capabilities -- "giving hands to the snake" we might call it (a metaphor for evolution, "snake" being the generic spinal chord in some readings)).
My own concerns start exactly there - with the word "environment".
My understanding is that many conclude that too much "environment" is what doomed Smalltalk to a minor role in today's software world.
Yes, there's lots to say about this (most of it not by me). In SmallTalk what you save is "the image" -- which is the world as you've massaged it and messaged it up until now. You pass whole worlds around, more than fragments thereof. Context becomes everything. And obviously, at some extreme, this becomes very impractical. Most of us evolve our "working environment" in our heads so to speak, crafting a personal and productive style, a mountain of habits, practices, familiar routines. But what we share with others is minus most of that, just a *piece* of the action. In Python, we ship modules or .py files. In Java, we ship beans (among other products). My guess is SmallTalk wizards long ago added the atomism people were missing, but by that time, the other language designers had already absorbed the OO paradigm, and were reimplementing it in C (to give us C++, Java, C#) and in Python. To barrel ahead in the commercial sector, people wanted something familiar. Back when OO got started, in like the 1960 and 70s, Smalltalk was way too Xerox Park, using odd-ball GUI and mouse ideas (expensive!) -- those would become standard on the PC only later, by way of the Mac.
And respect for children starts, I think, with not considering them any different from oneself on these kinds of issues. I am actually very disappointed that - according to what you are saying - Canonical sees Squeak as having a central role to play in education for children.
Think of it this way: You live in an environment (traffic, kitchen sink) and need to train your thinking from within the OO paradigm. "I am a factory" you say, dressing for work. Or "I am an Amtrak train, what are my properties and methods?" (shades of Walt Whitman). Then you go out there and live your life -- in Squeakland if you're a mouse in Alan Kay's mind. Or maybe this way: Play Uru for awhile, on a fast, solid, Windows computer (no, not an oxymoron, I'm tired of hearing that joke). Now *there's* an environment. Is it wrong to expose children to such art? Tara and I venture in Uru together, or she goes with her same-age friends. I bought it for her as a gift. In my scenario, in my lifestyle, a game like Uru has the status of a Mona Lisa or Rembrandt. It's only regional prejudice that people think anything named Cyan, in Spokane, Washington, could produce something as memorable. Now, am I saying the mostly flat Squeak environment is as surreal and immersive as Uru's.? Not exactly. But it gives you access to a wheelworks, the code piles, behind all this environmental interactivity. You see the tunnels under Disneyworld. So again this is a useful metaphor, as a kid grows up in a science, say a medical one.
Python is glue, a citizen of the larger software world, and proficiency in it helps make one a better, more productive and potentially creative citizen of the world. Squeak is too much its own world. If Canonical mission is to educate better world citizens, I think it is going off in the wrong direction here.
Art
Better ability to slip *between* worlds -- to hop on a jet in LA, to show up in Tokyo. I'm hoping to push cars to eat more vegetables (biodiesel) so we have more Arabica Gold left over for jets. I want kids to travel, Arabic speaking ones as much as any. Squeakers all. Squeakland typifies a genre of literature (I'll call it that) in which one becomes willfully lost in a vast matrix, the creation of other minds (we hope not too sick and twisted). More like reading a novel or watching science fiction or something. It's wonderful that we're able to build things like this. Another example: http://www.activeworlds.com/ Yes, *you* might hate such stuff, but we could *not* take all this away from children on general policy, once they've become addicted. There's simply too much precedent for healthy development in this direction, like in the form of fairy tales and mythology. Or see: http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/muds_vw.html Kirby