This. Even if Strings were safe or SafeStrings were really safe, learning how character arrays work and how to work them is the kind of basic knowledge that should be acquired at some point.
At the very least, learning about arrays and pointers and how C/C++ works with them is key to being able to read most code, and key to writing code that makes the most out of available resources.
By the time someone can use character arrays for string manipulation, she will know arrays and pointers to a good level. And a few other things too.
a7