The point I suspect is not to make them all into little Knuths. It's to make sure they have at least some exposure, so they can decide if this something they w

The point I suspect is not to make them all into little Knuths. It's to make sure they have at least some exposure, so they can decide if this something they want to pursue in a focused way later on -- and, importantly, regardless of their parents' own professional background (or lack thereof). BTW, perhaps you're forgetting -- they're just 8th graders. We're luck of half of them can pass a pre-Algebra class. Any coding skills we can get them to learn on top of that is a huge, huge win.