For over 10 years I’ve been concerned and then frustrated that the UK (state) school system appears to regard teaching Computing as simply running a series of Microsoft Office training courses. No, just because I thoroughly enjoy programming I do not expect every child to be equally as enthralled, but then, I also went to lessons in History, Geography, Art and more which didn’t excite me: the strict separation of subjects from one another is no longer a valid form of teaching – too much is interdependent, and interweaving facts leads to a more valid and holistic world view.
Although I disliked History and failed to remember more than a handful of dates, reading Neal Stevenson’s Baroque Cycle linked together previously unrelated events that I half recalled from school.
But that’s a separate rant. The poor state of computer literacy is described well in this BBC News article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/9503255.stm