"..possible to understand the entirety of practical computation from top to bottom without C..." - what level of understanding are you talking about? You don't need to implement data structures, for example, in order to know how to use them, but implementing them gives you deep understanding of the trade-offs you need to make, and implementing them in C specifically helps even more. You get to dig into the memory with malloc for example, you "see" and can even calculate all the memory that each struct will use up. I mean, this level of enlightenment does so much good, even if you don't use C to write production code on a daily basis.
I'm just saying that it's technically possible to implement anything (including what you describe) without being forced to use C (though perhaps awkward), so it's not safe to assume that someone who doesn't know C is ignorant of the low-level. At the same time it's obviously not rational to ignore C just for the sake of it.
I do like C myself and plan to continue using it. I've been looking in to OCaml recently and as someone else in the comments indicated, they seem like they'd make a good team.
