I often hear people opine about how today’s youth are wired at birth, but are they fluent? According to the Computer Research Association, enrollment in U.S. based computer science degrees is down 46% between 2003 and 2006.

The question becomes what are we going to do about it because so much of our future personal, professional, and national security depends on having competent technologists.

From the Wired story Darpa: U.S. Geek Shortage Is National Security Risk:

Darpa’s now hoping someone, somewhere, can come up with a way to make future philosophy majors change course. And they want to get ‘em while they’re young: Darpa insists that programs be “targeted to middle and high school students, and include methods “to maintain a positive, long-term presence in a student’s education.”

A long-term presence that includes evenings and weekends. Rather than incorporate computer-based activities into academics, Darpa wants the programs to be extracurricular, “perhaps as an after school activity, weekend, or summer event.”

Darpa is a U.S. Pentagon research group that has an obvious concern for U.S. security, and training 21st century geeks is a large part of our future security. This sounds like a perfect call to arms for Scratch or programs like Scratch that aim to make young people creators instead of raw consumers.

More importantly, Darpa wants buy-in beyond academics. It’s not that formal education isn’t necessary or event good; it’s that we shouldn’t rely on other people to be the sole educators of our young people. It’s why I think the open source community, Linux geeks in particular, are key adopters of Scratch.

Tell me what think.