I almost agree with you that programming can be approached from a Scheme mindset... It can be really mind-opening. But I think teaching programming from C++ or Python perspective can be of (almost) equal greatness... You can do many cool things here and there... It only depends on the level of the course. I mean, if you are going to take an advanced course in programming languages design, learning Scheme, Lisp and other languages can be of great help; but if you want to give an introduction to programming - to people with no programming-related experience - C, C++ and Python are very good choices, I think.