No. A course such as that should avoid language-specific instruction. In all reality, what language you use would depend on what you seek to accomplish. A course such as this should introduce would-be, or existing, programmers to programming methodologies that work, rather than teaching a specific langauge... just my opinion, of course...
I can't agree with you more. When I was in the CS program at SUNY @ Stony Brook, Computer Science 101 was a very serious "wash out" class. It started with over 500 students in the lecture, and by the end of the semester, there were fewer than 100 still in it. In that class, you never even touched a computer (VT-52 terminals on a VAX 750) until the last two weeks of class, and then just to use the "turtle" robot simulation software. The entire class was logic and problem solving, and that's something that's really missing from a lot of programs. Forget the coding, and go with simple problem solving.
Mark
Exactly right. I could almost care less what you program in; if you can't _tell_ me how you're going to solve the problem, we've both got a problem. After the solution is determined, then I'm willing to be impressed by beautiful code.