When I went to high school, there was a choice to go to this offshoot location for half the day, which had a programming class option. I went to that and it was what you'd expect out of a high school level programming class, I guess. Maybe a bit worse since in C++ and VB.NET it didn't really go into any abstract theory or even get to classes and functions. Except apparently now they've started using Scratch instead of real languages in it. I have to wonder if that's inappropriately dumbed down for that grade level. Someone should be able to handle real programming languages at that age if they're making a serious attempt to learn the field.

Scratch is a real programming language! Programming isn't about how fancy the tools you use are. It's about what you do with the tools you have. I started out in nothing more than QBasic.

QBasic was the Scratch of a certain era. The 0-to-pixels was small, the development environment offered useful help only a click away, and you could easily integrate it with external libraries if you wanted more advanced features or better performance.

It's bright and colourful and you can make the computer do things. It's perfect to catch the attention of a small child.

Right, it's great for them, but I was talking about high school

Sure, you want more than Scratch available - though seriously, if the kids just want to do Scratch? They learn that all this stuff is programmable and that they can make a computer do stuff. Do not underestimate the power of that epiphany, however it comes about.