Re:yes, they do! (Score 3, Interesting)

hear hear! The best thing that my parents did for me in high school was getting me a laptop so i could "take notes." I spent all of my class time programming and based on what I taught myself during those 4 years, I went off to college pursuing a CS degree which I'm expecting will be awarded in a couple of weeks!

But, like many people have said already, the problem is one of initiative. I had the initiative to pull out my TI-82 and fiddle around with it enough so that, when I got the laptop, I had a decent idea of what I was doing. Yet even CS kids, on the whole, don't do any programming that they aren't asked to do. Personally, I "take breaks" from working on programming projects to work on my own projects, yet that's considered a bit weird and over-the-top by most people in the degree in my school!

Personally, I think this is but a small example of the greater apathy that has spread across the country.