Teaching python (programming) to children

[Arthur Siegel]

Paul writes -

> Normally nobody thinks of kids that young as needing
>"programming instruction" or training in software development.  

Then remind me again how it came up in the context of this
thread?

>Here's an article from Papert's website about it called "Tomorrow's
>Classrooms", that gives a sense of what he wanted to accomplish:

>   http://www.papert.org/articles/TomorrowsClassrooms.html

Reminds me very, very much of an article I read in the Linux Journal
a while back, that wasn't about Python, but was in a supplement devoted
to it.

>Basically he was trying to follow up the ideas of Jean Piaget, the
>child development researcher.

That's great for the folks who don't happen to think Piaget is 
at some level horseshit.  Happily, a programming language
need not take a position - unless it for some reason chooses to.

My deepest objection - and why I'm consistently nasty when 
getting near this subject - is that it always seems to be the tool in play 
< LOGO/MindStorm/Alice, etc and etc> and its creators/advocates 
that are hogging center stage. And off in the corner somewhere is
the happy student,  and somewhere backstage, a subject matter.

God, I'm tired of going around in this circle.

Art