There’s a lot of hype around teaching children to learn computer programming but what age is a child ready to go down the road of programming. Marshall Brain thinks between 10 and 13 in the article linked above. Scratch is a language designed for children aged 8 and above. Whatever age you believe, this article gives some great links to computer programming languages and pre-programming languages for children of all ages.
I think teaching students programming language is beneficial as long as they enjoy learning the course and never gets bored in doing it.