In a technical sense, you're 100% correct. If there's a better way to teach the same concepts without actually programming, that would be really useful. In a pragmatic sense, it's not helpful to the cause.

For engineers, it's easy to get concerned about the trees and miss the forest. If a time-strapped journalist comes across a highly-upvoted blog post on a tech site, the headline won't be , "Engineer suggests strong alternatives to coding in school." It'll be closer to, "Coder suggests kids shouldn't code."

Pedantry is a luxury our profession heaps on the world, often without regard for how our subtle nuance is completely missed.