I learned programming basics on Racket in college. To this day, I think it instilled some good basic habits, though I don't think functional programming is the solution to everything.
Discussion
I don't believe in silver bullet either. But functional has a nice mind shift. Where you realy start thinking about the data. Not particular algos or design or whatver is hot this year.
Btw. I don't remember if it was basic or pascal? Or I can't decide.
But C was the first language I used for serious programming (early days proprietary touch screen drivers for linux) when I was like 13.