I teach pointers before I worry about arrays. However, typically, the students I see, they have already been exposed to arrays in their first CS class in some other language. However, even I were teaching C in the first CS class, I'd do pointers before arrays and describe arrays in terms of pointers. Just because it is fashionable these days to think "no one will ever need or want to know how computers actually work" doesn't mean it's true.
