We're talking about high school here though. Seems to me it would be like running a chemistry class without doing any lab work.

I agree. One of the most magic moments when you start programming is when you write your first program that does a truly significant amount of work. You run it, you're still kind of on human time scale and think it's going to take a few seconds, but it finishes instantly. That was the moment that really hooked me into programming.

Not trying to be argumentative or anything, but that's how chemistry is taught in 3rd world countries. Labs are a luxury :)

Eh fair, although RPi Zeros are pretty cheap these days :).

And rural America :)