That is not so bad idea. There is one essential skill - being able to get around and make any technology do your bidding.
People learn stuff well when it is rooted in reality. Make them make few simple programs that could be done with excel.
And right now with these insanely rich libraries that are on the market you could spend half your career without knowing what O notation is and have no problems.
Don't distract new programmers with computer science. ;-)