I teach high school math and science, and I teach some intro programming courses when I can fit them in. I'm also starting to mentor more students who are inte

I teach high school math and science, and I teach some intro programming courses when I can fit them in. I'm also starting to mentor more students who are interested in programming throughout my district. I currently teach in southeast Alaska, but I spent 7 years teaching in NYC before that. I agree that a good MOOC does fill the role of curating material. But it is still difficult for most of the students I see to find the right course, and get enough momentum in the course to finish it, without a knowledgeable person to mentor them in the initial phase. It's similar to getting a programming environment set up. To really start programming effectively, you've got to know your way around an editor, a filesystem, a package management system, a terminal... You can do some hello world stuff without all that, but it's hard to make meaningful progress in programming without knowing all that. It is certainly difficult to complete these courses without figuring this environment stuff out. So why do I like MOOCs? Because they help free me up to play the role of facilitator and mentor. I have one student now who is happily working his way through a python-related MOOC, and a couple other students who are trying them out. I just watch their progress, and help them when they hit a block. But none of them would be likely to complete these courses without that guidance. 'But I would count finding you and getting your help as "taking responsibility for my own education".' It's not that simple; I am spotting these students, they are not finding me. If you're not living in a tech hotspot, it's pretty hit or miss whether there is anyone around who can act as a mentor. It's been said in other comments, that many of us are programmers because we watched people around us work as programmers when we were younger. That is a huge influence on who becomes a programmer.