This is a great take. Having been a kid that was super intrigued by CS, the classes were more a formality, and a place to ask the few questions I couldn't put into words very easily for an internet search. Not to say classes weren't important, but I can definitely speak to it being more about getting kids intrigued than just going through the curriculum.

As a complete side note, I think it would have been easier to learn programming if I had started with some lower-level CS, not high-level programming. Some concepts behind even high-level programming don't make a lot of sense to a newbie unless they understand what the limitations of a machine are, and why they inherently exist.