I am not convinced that "thinking algorithmically" (whatever it means and however it is related to coding) is correlated with success or happiness or any other useful metric. I am also not sure that teaching one to write simple programs is going to make them better at thinking about their life in a systematic way. It certainly does not do it to professional programmers, in my experience.
edit: I see that you were responding to the claim that coding specifically should be what is taught. I retract my objection to your objection.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-one-lifespan/201210/critical-thinking-and-real-world-outcomes
I'm not talking about a class that teaching introduction to programming. I mean a class about analyzing everyday problems in a step-wise fashion. Teaching children how to granularize problems instead of relying on just intuitively discovering the answer or failing. In my experience schools are failing horribly at t...
P/S/A: There are single sentences which can create life-changing amounts of difference.