First, I find the basis of your question faulty because I was taught functional programming at school. (It wasn't what I started with, but we did do some functional programming.)
Second, I question the ease of transferring from functional coding to imperative coding. I don't think it'd be as easy as you make it out to be.
Third, programming is (for most people) a job skill. The vast majority of shops use imperative programming. Therefore, it's most useful to future coders to learn imperative programming.
