Erm, yes? In fact, the folks I know who made it into industry and graduate school openly hated people who had come into their workspaces without that knowledge.

It is simply not possible for teachers to be able to keep up to date with the latest flavours in industry"

Then why the hell are we paying as much as we are for tuition? Every professional programmer I know worth any salt spends at least 5-10 hours a week in continuing education of one form or another (even if it's just reading about the new JS whatever on HN).

"I really have no time for developers who go on about how we should be teaching lambdas or mutability or tail recursion to 12 year olds or that kind of high horse gubbins."

A simple analogy will usually get the point across, and a simple disclaimer of "This is a better way of doing things, but don't worry about it" means your job of showing the door without getting sidetracked is complete.

~

The author mentions A-levels, so perhaps they aren't looking at college-level students, but even so that's no excuse for dumbing-down the subject matter.

That said, it is important to be able to explain these concepts without being technical--anyone who has dealt with piles of dishes understands stack semantics, anyone who has lived with other people in close proximity has a few intuitions about mutable state.