Teaching to unsuspecting youngsters the effective use of formal methods is one of the joys of life because it is so extremely rewarding.

The tools we use have a profound and devious influence on our thinking habits, and therefore on our thinking abilities.

The effective exploitation of his powers of abstraction must be regarded as one of the most vital activities of a competent programmer.

Much of the excitement we get out of our work is that we don't really know what we are doing.

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.

The prisoner falls in love with his chains.

Yes, I share your concern: how to program well -though a teachable topic- is hardly taught. The situation is similar to that in mathematics, where the explicit curriculum is confined to mathematical results; how to do mathematics is something the student must absorb by osmosis, so to speak. One reason for preferring symbol-manipulating, calculating arguments is that their design is much better teachable than the design of verbal/pictorial arguments. Large-scale introduction of courses on such calculational methodology, however, would encounter unsurmoutable political problems.