I would suggest a language like newlisp (http://newlisp.org), that has enough libraries to do unix scripting.
Also, you should consider teaching him awk because it has simple semantics and it will be simpler for him to switch to C later.
I really hate the syntax, and I may be lazy but I'm sick of memory leaks and stuff. I don't want to spend my time tweaking my program so that it won't take to much resources, etc…
I prefer languages that offers a certain abstraction, languages that allow me to concentrate on the algorithmic part of the program, the core of the application.
Btw, why do you hate C ?