In reply to Carl Hancock.

This. Any CMS / Framework has its own quirks. It's a lot better to teach the building block components like JavaScript, CSS, HTML, PHP etc. It'd be like a mechanic class teaching Delorean car technology instead of breaking down things like combustion engine basics and suspension.

Not to mention that WP's architecture is pretty antiquated from a modern web app (use of globals, inconsistent naming of functions, no clear MVC, the loop, etc).

Let's be honest, recent versions have gotten better in this respect but if you want to learn good programming, don't learn WP or you'll have to unlearn a bunch of esoteric things that only WP does. If WP was built on something more modern like Yii or Laravel—or even node.js—Treehouse might be singing a different tune.