This was going to be my suggestion. You could also make sure some sort of curses library is installed, e.g. https://bashsimplecurses.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ h

This was going to be my suggestion. You could also make sure some sort of curses library is installed, e.g. https://bashsimplecurses.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://bashsimplecurses.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ But really the question is misguided. Kids need to want to do something with a computer, and in order to do that they will learn shell script, basic, javascript, asm typed from magazines, whatever, to get it done. The environment itself is instrumental, not terminal.