My school computer science is mandatory in the 8th and 9th grade but the way they go about it is all wrong in my opinion. The first year it was attempted there was a small introduction to code with blocks that represent code that stick together. Most in my class moaned and groaned about so then we moved on to python you can guess what happened next. My suggestion is to really only offer programming to students who actually what and have the drive for it and for the ones who don't to learn basic computer skills like using google or something.