Hmm... well I think the 'whats at school is not good' syndrome came from the fact that alot of schools or school institutions all typically run off of budgets, many of them in North America(Canada and US specifically) lately being reduced quite signifigantly. And as such, expensive compilers like Delphi at X-hundred a pop are out of the question. Turbo Pascal was alright because the pricing was a bit mor reasonable, but as things go, Pascal got less affordable.

With the introduction of Free Pascal, it is possible that this situation with the schools can be averted. Now with GCC already having a rather strong hold in the Open Source 'market' people might argue that C is the better way to go, but if we all recall, Pascal was made a 'learning language'. Now it's come a long way in the many years, but if you sell it as a learning language to the schools with the key notes that it is;

A) Better at teaching PROPER object oriented programming;

B) Easier to read and understand; and

C) a thousand times more friendlier as a language becasue of it's excellent debugging and error catching capabilities.

These were the key points that teachers would talk about with utter glee in their voice when I asked about the C/Pascal question. And I've learned to believe it even today.

C may be the way that the market goes today, but markets change! And like it did before, I believe it is highly possible that it can again. But it starts with the next generation and what good things that they are taught in school today.