It is worth noting that Pascal was originally intended as an extremely portable language to teach structured programming. It was only later that people began actually using it for real stuff.

The key to its portability was that it shipped with an interpreter that would run under a simple bytecode machine. Implement that bytecode and you could run Pascal on virtually anything. Back in 1970, this was a pretty useful feature.

I'd be tempted to agree, but in that case you can even look at things like VB (in whichever flavour). You would need to somehow keep the subjects relevant to the current environment too, otherwise the clued up kids will get bored, and the less clued up ones will be more clued up, but in mostly irrelevant tech (school IT doesn't teach abstract computer science - it teaches stuff you can use to a degree).