Reading some (probably hard technical) books is the hardest way there is to start this thing. Especially with C++ where it’s hard enough just to see your results. If you want something to be done, give them something where they can see their results ASAP. You can of course achieve this with C++, but then you should get them a working IDE, debugger and maybe some easy graphical library to play around with.
They have got C++ & Unix books on their shelves but as far as I can tell, it hardly been read.
Hoping your story gets the ball rolling.