I've always found SICP quite overrated (I'm saying this after reading it).
Given Python's learning curve, a much better curriculum would involve going through the codebase of a few well-chosen projects, sending in a few patches and perhaps writing a report on the high-level design of the piece of software or on how the project solves a particular problem (how does XYZ handle i18n? how does ABC stay stable even on a failing network?)
Given Python's learning curve, a much better curriculum would involve going through the codebase of a few well-chosen projects, sending in a few patches and perhaps writing a report on the high-level design of the piece of software or on how the project solves a particular problem (how does XYZ handle i18n? how does ABC stay stable even on a failing network?)