My introduction to programming was one semester of Pascal in high school (2 years before college). There was a second semester class as well where the teacher just handed us an intro C book and told us all "Go learn it. Make up your own assignments and I'll grade them. I'll be over here teaching the first class if you need help."

I think schools are way too coddling when they teach kids "Pointers are scary. That's why you'll only learn Java here." I don't think my classmates where particularly gifted and yet we all survived C with minimal assistance.