One of the less obvious benefits of teaching a mainstream language (or a "hobby" language—the kind you might pick up on the weekend for some hacking) is all the folks who don't go on to graduate with a CS degree. Will Scheme teach interesting ideas? Of course. Will someone who doesn't code for a living download a scheme compiler and write a script five years after graduating? Not a chance. Ten years? There's no universe.
Front-loading the mainstream language means you're not just teaching CS fundamentals, you're giving someone a tool that they can readily pick up and use in their real life for real tasks. It's the same as having home maintenance as a component of your basic high school shop class instead of how to rebuild a carburetor: unless you're working with carburetors for a living, that's an unlikely skill that you'd reach for. But knowing how to correctly hang a picture, replace an electrical outlet, or patch drywall is something almost anyone can put to good use ten, twenty, thirty years on.
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