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 this and the children who I coached in such basics of problem solving saw across the board academic improvements.