> I definitely support the notion that everyone should learn problem solving skills, but people can take different paths than programming: mathematics, natural sciences, and even chess, for example.

I agree, though you'd have to go far over the school level of maths to get such benefits. Also, given that CS is a part of math, you can't avoid it if you want to learn some mental structures - we actually DID invent a new way of thinking in the last 100 years. And CS should be, in my opinion, tangled with programming, for a mortal to understand it and have fun with it at the same time.

So, in other words, by all means study math, but catching a bit of CS knowledge and programming skills at some point should be a natural consequence of it.