> >>> My high-school programming class was advertised as teaching people how
> >>> to
> >>> program in C and do all sorts of low-level stuff. I signed up thinking
> >>> I might finally meet a "computer expert" that actually knew what they
> >>> were talking about...
> >>>
> >>> The teacher began by forcing us all to make "hello world" applications
> >>> IN JAVA!

I teach Computer Science at a small public university. There is a wide
variety in the high school preparation of my students. Most of them wind up
in Java classes similar to yours, which demotivates them and makes my life
harder. Some of them have absolutely excellent classes. It depends a lot on
whether the school district can afford to have dedicated computing/technology
faculty. My general impression is that large, wealthy school districts are
able to devote enough resources to provide I.T. classes, but most (smaller and
poorer) school districts can't.

That said, I agree completely with you about the importance of a "low-level"
understanding of computer systems. You don't have to understand how an engine
works to be a race-card driver, but it helps. And if you want to be in the
pit crew, you'd better know the difference between a metric wrench and an
imperial one. Knowledge of binary, especially, shows up in lots of
applications other than "systems-level" coding -- graphics filters, subnet
masks, digital signal processing, numerical analysis, bitsets for network
flags, lots of places.