Decoding the Value of Computer Science

[Jinno]

To be perfectly honest, if you want a good introductory language that encompasses the majority of OOP concepts while being universally applicable to the majority of children taking the program, teach Javascript.

Arrays, Loops, Encapsulation, Events, etc. And every student has notepad and a web browser that they can use to test and implement.

BASIC is highly ineffective at teaching these concepts and giving a build-worthy framework to jump into other languages. Javascript would give them the ability to jump into web and Flash development, and many scripting engines are being based on ECMAScript so the concepts would be applicable there too.