C is historic, and not something I think anyone should want to ever use (why use an abacus when you have a calculator).
That made me chuckle a little bit because I'm also a student (Software Engineering) and right after learning some fundamentals of C++ they started ramming Assembly down our throats. By the time I got to a third year project programming a microprocessor in Assembly I'd punch a baby to be able to code in C.
Now I understand what you're TRYING to say but the reality is that unless you can get a grasp of a low level language before they push you into Java/C++ then you'll never have a "complete" understanding of the architecture you're coding for.
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn