Plumbing skills are not a terrible thing to have actually, but I would see this more like teaching literacy and math... basic ability to manipulate data, think logically, and debug your ideas is going to be useful regardless of what field the person might end up in, imho.
Have there been any studies showing, e.g. correlation between having been exposed to programming techniques at an early age and better critical/ logical thinking skills later on in life? I'd be surprised if there were none, but equally I'd wonder how much was really cause and effect, vs kids with inherently more analytical mindsets more likely to opt for and spend time on learning how to code in the first place.
