Wow, that was a lot of strawman arguments. (1) The OP's title calls for every American. (2) "Code" is pretty agnostic as far as paradigms. Many people would be

Wow, that was a lot of strawman arguments. (1) The OP's title calls for every American. (2) "Code" is pretty agnostic as far as paradigms. Many people would be served just fine by learning how to do basic computation, graphing, and scripting in Excel. (3) These folks are not computer scientists, but they don't need to be to advocate tech literacy. (4) It's about life skills (esp. tech literacy) -- more like Thoreau-style self reliance rather than becoming a disposable cog. (5) Cart before the horse... (6) You mean like math, science, reading, and writing? (7) Learning to code basic programs helps you accomplish real tasks. Insight into "software development" be damned. I drive a car, but I'm not a ICE thermodynamics expert.