For contrast, Microsoft Word and similar tools have a built-in permanent edit history. Using them requires no more than knowing what menu to find it in. As far as I know it doesn't do branching but for the baseline MVP of "I need to know what this file looked like before we made these changes" it solves the problem with significantly less than "some hours" of training.
I wouldn't call installing a vcs "learning to program".
A better analogy might be: "Can you imagine, opening an A4 notepad to take lecture notes took us some hours"
Not a perfect analogy I know but "setting up tools to start learning" != "learning completely"
Either way, I don't really get this kind of aggressive resistance to making things more accessible...