I've never been a parent or teacher, and have not been responsible for raising children in any formal capacity. So, my question is...
Are the kids remotely interested in programming, and does it make sense to try teaching them if they show no interest? As a child, I remember pushed towards taking piano lessons and hating every second of it.
I'm a parent who never got to take piano lessons. And I didn't particularly enjoy things that I was made to do when young.
And now as a parent with kids, I wish I got a chance to take piano lesson (or any musical instrument) when young. I make kids do things that I know I didn't enjoy when young, like studying, being responsible, facing consequences. And just like me, it's a decade(s) long process.
Obviously there should be reasonable limit on how much you will push your kids to do things they don't want to do. But I believe it's every parent's responsibility to help/push kids experience/learn new things when young. Even if they don't enjoy it (if so, it should not be pushed too hard or for long), it's a success because everyone involved gets to know what the kids enjoy or hate.
I'm not suggesting scheduling every waking hour of a child for an organized activity/study. But more/various activities for young kids are generally a good thing imho.
That's a good question because nowadays everybody is teaching their own gospel about programming. First, we don't know yet if it is convenient to launch these massive programming campaigns.
But, I think programming is a creativity tool, and as such kids can use it for creation. Sadly our tools adds a lot of complexity and doesn't help to make this creativity flow easily. Many kids will be frustrated by the number of details they should learn to move a simple object on the screen. This is why I recommended Scratch Jr. and Alice 3D, while not perfect you can do some advanced stuff with simple programming. If kids are not frustrated or annoyed by the tools they will engage in creative projects in art and/or science because this tool enables incredible new ways of expression.
I've been teaching the curriculum of @codeclub for 4 years now (see elsewhere in this thread) as an optional after school club in the U.K. It's massively over subscribed every term, this past term I've had 50% coverage of the total number of students offered in that year group. So, no one is forced and it appears popular, but I guess your point is still valid that parents could be pushing the children. Subjectively, it feels like they want to do it though.....
> Are the kids remotely interested in programming, and does it make sense to try teaching them if they show no interest? As a child, I remember pushed towards taking piano lessons and hating every second of it.
No one knows the details of your experiences and psyche, I'm not saying that you should continue your piano lessons.
However, parents are primarily responsible from guarding children from their own poor choices among other things. I wish I didn't stop the guitar lessons when I was a child although my mind was primarily on girls, consoles and basketball.
Are the kids remotely interested in programming, and does it make sense to try teaching them if they show no interest? As a child, I remember pushed towards taking piano lessons and hating every second of it.