I think your talk to the third-grade class probably was a lot more helpful in encouraging children to consider computer science as a career than many much of the formal material I've seen, which is about as useful as that silly Just Say No campaign. Now we've got "Just say yes."

I asked my daughter what she knew about computer science. She is an A student in 7th grade. She said, "You mean like special effects? A woman who did that talked at science camp last year. It sounded all right."

I asked her if she had learned anything else in school about computer science and she said, "No."

It really bugs me that schools don't cover anything about computer science at all.