Bull. Programming is a great skill to have whether or not you use it on a daily basis or in a professional context; it's an excellent key to a real understanding of computers and how they work, and the more ubiquitous computers become in every aspect of life, the more useful that understanding will be.
I agree that it's a great skill to have, but the list of great skills to have is exceedingly long and there is a limited amount of time and resources available for instruction of k-12 kids. What makes learning how to do a few tricks in BASIC or python more important than other things such as focusing on reading proficiency, mathematics and other important things that are of much more benefit to most people in society? Programming is a very specialized skill and the vast majority of people not only have little use for it, they also loathe it with fervor. I wish I had a dollar for every friend I've had who told me they were interested in learning how to code, tried it for a while and subsequently dropped that mess on the floor.
One does not need to learn a few lame programming tricks in Python to understand how to make use of a computer. Most of the people on this forum couldn't code something as simple as Lemonaid Stand to save their life, but they surely know a lot about computers.
