Isn't Scheme the first language taught at MIT for CS?
And sure reading a recipe is easier than a mathematical proof, but it does't make you a good cook^^;
Most people who go into CS should be pretty decent at math, and if they don't understand the algorithm behind a program they should work on catching up because otherwise they are not going to get far.
We did HUGS (Haskell) in first semester CS and I didn't have any particular problems (backed up only by school maths and no programming experience at all), now one semester later we are doing Java and comparing the two of them I'm glad we started with the functional one.