I don't get the controversy. I don't see this as being about making everyone into a professional programmer, no more than having every student take music class

I don't get the controversy. I don't see this as being about making everyone into a professional programmer, no more than having every student take music class will make them a professional musician. I believe it is more about the ancillary benefits in opening up new ways of problem solving, and having some rudimentary awareness of the inner workings of a world that one might otherwise never have the chance to explore. Some students will catch the bug and tear off on their own journey of independent learning and discovery and create great things. But for most it will just be a new dimension of a full and well-rounded primary education. The problem is that the current generation of educators and schools are largely wholly unequipped to do this, so we have to step up and help out. I ran an after school "Tech Club" for a couple of years at my kids K-8 school. This year the administration asked me to bring it into the classroom and I am teaching 100% of the students in grades 6 - 8 basic programming with Scratch. It is just one 45 minute class per week, with each grade getting the class for one trimester (12 - 13 weeks). You can't do a whole lot in this time, but you can definitely do something, a whole lot more than the school was doing with technology before.