Consider this: it is a fact that MIT introductory programming class switched from Scheme to Python because among other things, students were spending too much t

Consider this: it is a fact that MIT introductory programming class switched from Scheme to Python because among other things, students were spending too much time reading libraries manuals and implementation references instead of writing code. Nope, the decision was entirely political, driven by panic when post-dot.com crash enrollment dropped by more than half after being a steady 40% of the undergraduates for decades. And I believe your specifics are entirely wrong, but I don't know exactly how the course evolved, e.g. they threw in a couple of weeks of OO that isn't in SICP as that became popular. But at least in the beginning of the course, it's all self-contained in the book. Much of the rest of what you say is spot on, and are some of the reasons I gave up on mainline/Common Lisp 30+ years ago.