[MaysonL]

I would venture to guess that there are at least a couple dozen skills which would do the average person more good than learning to code: playing a musical instrument, learning to do order-of-magnitude estimations, operate a few power tools, basic carpentry, basic calculus, et so many cetera.

Hell, just learning to spell better than the average HNer.

[jiggy2011]

Not sure I agree, how many jobs are there apart from musician or carpenter where these skills would be especially useful?

Now think how many monotonous office jobs are there that could be at least partly automated by a few lines of script?

Also when I was at school we had compulsory music classes as well as compulsory design/technology classes that involved using power tools.

[craigvn]

It's got nothing to do with learning skills for jobs.