Perhaps there's hope for statistical NLP, though: earlier this year I was surprised and pleased to receive e-mail from a local seventh grader, who was seeking some pointers for a science fair project that involved using ideas from information theory to predict the grade level of written text. I'm delighted to report that this student did a fine job, winning a variety of awards at the Montgomery County (Maryland) Science Fair, which is quite competitive. He sent me this great photo -- notice that Claude Shannon makes an appearance in the upper left hand corner!
