object oriented programming for neophyte programmers

"there's a tendency for people to teach arts without introducing their faculties. this gives birth to the statement 'a little knowledge can be dangerous'" ~Miyamoto Musashi author of The Book of Five Rings

most academic institutions now teach intro to CS courses in Java. for people who have programmed before, this isn't too bad, but for novice programmers, it takes forever to grasp the concept of instantiating an intrinsic data type such as INT or CHAR and to appreciate that compilation errors result in passing the wrong data type to the wrong function.

knowing that beginners flounder with such concepts, how do you expect students not to flounder in creating their own classes and instantiating objects of that data type?

it would perhaps be more practical to conduct an intro programming class as well as data structures in a functional language and then have another course which segues from functional to object orient programming.

because the whole purpose of getting an education is to have a solid foundation on which you can foster other types of related knowledge later