I honestly believe that programming should be considered a vital skill on par with reading and writing. I'm not saying everybody needs to be able to solve LeetCode or build production ready apps, but anybody who works with a computer could benefit from being able to do a little scripting. Programming is a skill that can be a foundation for thousands of different hobbies.
Why do most adults know how to read and do basic math? Because we consider these to the important enough to teach them to children whether they are interested or not. Obviously the thing that differentiates good teachers from bad is the ability to make learning interesting. So in the case of reading, we have books specially written for children of all ages.
Programming is a much younger subject than reading, and it's changed a lot in the last few decades. I am happy to provide my kids with the tools I had available, but honestly I never got good enough at BASIC to build anything useful and LOGO was fun but again, useless. Scratch and other modern kid-focused languages are much better for the job.
Sure, but are 7 year olds ready? As this thread has shown some clearly are, but in my experience he vast majority are not. Why not wait until middle school instead of pushing them toward something they aren't ready for. It would be like teaching an 11 year old calculus.
Are they ready for what? I had no problem instructing a turtle around to draw a line on a screen with Logo or building a number guessing game. Nobody is talking about teaching 7 year olds Haskell.
To go with your calculus example, we don't teach 11 year olds calculus, but we do teach them things that they will need to know later in order to do calculus. We expect them to practice those skills again and again until they are easy.
You expose your kids to things, and hope they'll like some of them. That's just how it works. You just have to hope that they end up liking some of those things you've exposed them to, or at least gaining enough from them that was worthwhile. I know I got dropped off at soccer class plenty of times, even though I fucking hate soccer
Why do most adults know how to read and do basic math? Because we consider these to the important enough to teach them to children whether they are interested or not. Obviously the thing that differentiates good teachers from bad is the ability to make learning interesting. So in the case of reading, we have books specially written for children of all ages.
Programming is a much younger subject than reading, and it's changed a lot in the last few decades. I am happy to provide my kids with the tools I had available, but honestly I never got good enough at BASIC to build anything useful and LOGO was fun but again, useless. Scratch and other modern kid-focused languages are much better for the job.