Heck, teach basic cooking, basic construction, basic plumbing, basic engine repair. Chances are, you're gonna need a basic understanding of all of these eventually... And if nothing else, it's an opportunity to make some aspects of basic mathematics more obviously useful to kids who are struggling to stay interested.
I think you're being downvoted because life isn't just about creating something. Basic accounting is an important tool for any adult living in this world. I would argue the knowledge of managing finances is more important than programming, because it applies to everyone, regardless of your career path.
Debt, loans, mortgages, interest, investments, retirement plans, etc. These are important things for everyone to understand. When I look around, I think a lot of people would be better off if they had a better understanding of finances, but I rarely look at people and think their lack of programming know-how is holding them back.
I have run successful companies and been fine without ever knowing basic accounting.
We are not talking about what is most important we are talking about what is most useful powerful for someone who today is in school and need to have some skills for the future.
Are you seriously telling me that if you had to choose for your kid you would tell them to learn accounting and not programming?
You're missing the point, we're not talking about career paths here, no one is advising anyone to become an accountant over a programmer. We're talking about an introduction to these subjects.
If you had one week to sit down with every person in this world, I think that time would be better spent discussing finances, investments and retirement, instead of an introduction to variables, if/then statements, and loops.
I am not missing the point since I was the one making it.
It doesn't matter what you think would be better what matters is whether programming contrary to accounting can be seen as a language or not and is the reason why it should be taught.
Just putting some arbitrary other field in there is what is missing the point whether that is accounting, CPR, sports, history and so on.
You can put anything in but programming is different since it potentially can contain all the other fields in it's ability to simulate them all.
