Today sees the launch of a tiny new computer, called with maybe tongue in cheek, the Raspberry Pi, tiny and without screen or keyboard, it has one characteristic lacking in almost every desktop: it can be programmed! Yes, it can be used for developing code a skill derided for many years by the British educational establishment wedded to the the notion that Information Technology meant learning to use such as Microsoft Word or Excel and of course the Internet, blithely ignoring the fact that functional proficiency in most commercial packages could be achieved in  few hours by those with average intelligence. Ironically the one group with no need to be taught the use of the Internet was that likely to be in schools! Erica, my late first wife campaigned long and hard back in the eighties to keep programming in schools.

That was the era of the BBC Micro and the ZX Spectrum, also tiny by modern standards and both entirely programmable by the user. Since then computers have become progressively more sophisticated and in doing so the coding has been increasingly hidden from the user, so much so that it is now largely invisible. How many Excel users of today are aware that the package could be programmed by the use of what used to be call “macros”? At that time there was a generation of youngsters who bought these primitive devices, played the games provided with them, then found that the could alter them, only a short step from the realisation that they could develop their very own games, which of course is exactly what they did!

Was the educational world delighted by this development, excited that children had found their own way of learning quite advanced mathematics, without of course knowing they did so? No they were not! The atmosphere among teachers faced with this child-led revolution, was simple fear! This was something they did not understand and were unfortunately unwilling to put in the effort needed to learn. So we had “computer assisted learning” and that was the only permitted use for computers in the classroom. The dead hand of the school system yet again turned a fascinating subject into drudgery and tedium. Politicians were equally timid; for many of them “advanced mathematics” meant such some arcane piece of arithmetic history such as “long division”!

So the most glorious opportunity offered to educationalists in a century was thrown away and thee generations of schoolchildren were given to think that IT was about typing documents or doing accounts.

But now, maybe too late, an enlightened minister has realised that in the country which invented the computer the principles behind it are no longer taught leading to the danger that we will be left behind in a changing world. Michael Gove wants to bring coding, hitherto an dirty word, into the classroom. The Raspberry is a potential vehicle for that. Significantly maybe, its programming language, Scratch is American!