Well Friends,
I learned OOP using SmallTalk last year with the British Open University. The reason they choose SmallTalk is because it is extremelly simple to learn. It was, I believe, one of, if not the first pure OOP language created by the same ppl who developed the first GUIs. It really is like piecing lego together, especially in the course I took, which used an extremelly simple IDE called Learning Books which were created just for the purpose of teaching. I do have a Dolphin SmallTalk IDE but I find it quite hard to understand compared to the OU IDE that we used. That was a 2nd year course and the final part of the course was an introduction to development using UML.
I have to say that I found SmallTalk dead easy and it was a good grounding for this years course which is entitled Software Systems and their Development and Java is also taught throughout this course. Thats why I'm going through Wrox's Beginning Java 1.4 at the moment. If anyone wants a copy of the SmallTalk course I have the whole thing in pdf format along with the Learning Book IDE, which I could send over the net but there are some parts of the course which only came in printed material, like the UML case studies and the Handbook of the hierarchy and list of classes which we were allow to take into the exam. but anyway, let us know if you want stuff I have got.
I am enjoying learning Java just now, but honestly said, I'd be floundering terribly if I hadn't learned the principle of OOP in SmallTalk first.
     Stafford

It's a happy day when men beat their swords into ploughshares but, at the end of the day, only truth will set men free.