There are a lot of schools that teach Java and C++ but whenever I see the syllabus for one of these classes it's almost always some cut and dry OO stuff with possibly some boring end of class project. With all the little gadgets and emulators for those gadgets why aren't more schools re-purposing those classes so that the students work their way up to building android or meego applications? That way students get to experience first hand what it takes to engineer/build a piece of software instead of doing finger exercises with syntax. Practically every self-taught programmer that I know started programming because they wanted to make their gadgets do things for them. They didn't learn a programming language with an abstract conception of using it on some far distant project so I don't understand why schools don't emulate this style of teaching.