How Scratch Is Feeding Hacker Values into Young Minds

Reader mirandakatz writes: It’s the 10th anniversary of Scratch, the kids programming language that’s become a popular tool for training the next generation of minds in computer science. But as Steven Levy writes at Backchannel, Scratch’s real value is how it imparts lessons in sharing, logic, and hackerism: ‘A product of the MIT Media Lab, Scratch is steeped in a complicated set of traditions — everything from educational philosophy to open source activism and the pursuit of artificial life. The underpinnings of this tool subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, convey a set of values through its use… These values include reverence of logic, an unshakeable belief in the power of collaboration, and a celebration of the psychic and tangible rewards of being a maker.’