Back in 2006, author David Brin lamented the lack of a good way to get kids into programming (Brin's article was actually my impetus to start writing an e-book for teaching small humans to code): Why Johnny can't code.
Compare with the situation now...
John Naughton thinks kids should be taught to code in school. Given what is taught at the moment in UK schools for ICT, this isn't a bad idea: Why Kids Should Be Taught Code.
Dan Rowinski, of ReadWriteWeb, writes about a movement forming in the programming community around the idea of a new standard of literacy: Computer Programming for All: A New Standard of Literacy.
Matthew Murray, of ExtremeTech, has a few doubts, and thinks there needs to be more focus on the basics (imagination, logic, reasoning, and problem solving): Should Kids Learn To Code?
Jeff Atwood (also linked in the RWW article) thinks that you should learn to code for the right reasons, or else focus on more important skills: Please don't learn to code.