I'm sure there were people who opposed mass literacy and public education way back in the day because not every job then required one to be able to read and write. "Most kids are going to be farmers. Why do they need to learn to write?" Imagine where we’d all be if society listened to that nonsense. 

Teaching kids to code is about giving POWER to our children and the future of our society. Almost everything we do these days revolves around computers and who has say in the applications available to us? The people who know how to code. We currently rely heavily on others with a specialized knowledge in coding to recognize what we need as individuals or a segment of society, and make solutions available to us. People from all walks of life, for the betterment of society, should be able to express themselves and share ideas in code just as easily as we are able to do so through reading and writing our spoken languages.