I understand what you're trying to say as I am living proof that you can still be a successful programmer without starting with C.

But I should at least mention that learning C and tinkering with system / network programming helped me improve my understanding of higher level languages in a way I didn't think was conceivable.

Learning about and dealing with memory management, system calls, how code is compiled and translated into machine code etc can be boring and repetitive if you do it long enough but is I believe an essential component of becoming a wiser/better programmer (at least in my experience).