What's the Scratch of the Social Sciences?

Short version: I want something like Scratch for the social sciences—not a tool to teach programming to social scientists, but something to teach the social sciences to programmers.

Long version: Scratch is the most successful “learn to program” tool ever created. Its block-based interface allows people of all ages to learn about loops, conditionals, and other fundamental programming concepts without inessential weirdness making them feel lost or stupid. What’s more, people who teach Scratch go out of their way to make novices feel like they belong.

What exists for teaching economics, sociology, history¹, and the like to programmers who know as little about those subjects as a typical anthropology major knows about CSS or JavaScript?

1. Undergrad textbooks don’t work for this audience for the same reason that undergraduate computer science textbooks are a mis-fit for librarians who want to learn a little coding.

2. Most books written by academics for laypeople assume background knowledge that my audience doesn’t have. I’ve given copies of Twitter and Tear Gas and So You Want to Talk About Race to colleagues who want to learn more about these issues. It hasn’t gone well, but that’s no reflection on either the authors or the readers: it’s just the same kind of mis-match I see when programmers teaching programming to non-programmers assume that everyone knows what an operating system is.

3. Most other books I’ve found are exhortations rather than explanations, or split hairs that my audience don’t even know exist.

Part of the problem, I think, is that experts are often condescending or unforgiving when someone simplifies things in order to make them more accessible. When I sent out drafts of Teaching Tech Together to early reviewers, for example, one senior professor’s response was, “You have either not read or not understood the papers you cite.” I thought about replying with, “I have—I’m just writing for a general audience rather than doctoral students,” but I don’t think they would have accepted that as valid.

So: what do you know of for teaching and/or learning the social sciences that is, like Scratch, consciously designed to be accessible to people with zero background knowledge and is supported by a community that helps those people as they are? Pointers or introductions would be very welcome.

Later: in response to the first handful of suggestions, I’m not looking for computer games or simulations—at least, I don’t think I am. I think I’m looking for something like the Carpentries, i.e., a collection of lessons plus workshops that deliver those lessons plus a community that centers novice learning whose scope is wide-ranging (and therefore fairly shallow in any area) rather than deep (and therefore necessarily narrow). I asked for something like Scratch because I want something with that vibe, not because I think the only way to teach programmers is via programming tools.