First of all - the following is based purely on my own discussions with a few (few == 15) teachers and propably this only applies to Finland and further more in Finnish elementary schools.

It seems to very common to combine the mathematics and computer science to be teached by one person. This is IMHO a very good choise. However, mathematics and IT have a huge difference in the way these are evolving.

Mathematics, and I mean elementary school level mathematics, has been very similar for the last century or so. This is not the statement for IT. It is still evolving and it looks like the pace of development is only collecting more speed.

If I would start teaching IT today and would not do anything else IT related I would be obsolete in less than 5 years. The kids would simply outperform me both in skills and knowledge.

So maybe it is not that important to teach the kids how to use mouse, how to write a Word document or such. They know it already and they will get the best education from their classmates in that level.

The article that actually initiated this conversation actually has this idea of tossing resources right out of the window by teaching the kids skills that they already have or will have without any additional help from the society.

I also agree that the very small group of kids who are really faschinated on computers should get the best available education there is for this subject. For those kids the computer "science" lessons of today are boring and they get distracted to unwanted activities just because they cannot understand the reason for all this B.S.

I had a separate group of 5 kids with whom we went through the PITA of GA (Genetic Algorithm). The zeroes and crosses game we created with it is quite impossible to win (Uses ANSI graphics for game display - curses library etc..). Not a single gasp or any signs of tiredness were present on those lessons that took place right after the ordinary school day. I chose GA because the principle is easy to understand but the implementation is really (and I mean REALLY) hard. As far as I know all of them are on different IT oriented jobs today.

The headmaster did not understand anything about the things we were doing after the school day. Fortunately he did not put a stop on it as was his habit on other similar special courses.