Some wants to learn from bottom up(analytic approach), others want to see cool stuff then tweak, modify, replace to find the limits (holistic approach).
IIRC there is a tendency that young people prefer the holistic approach while teachers either are selected for or grow into preferring the analytical approach.
"Make them suffer like us and they will learn the holy truth" ;D
It's not like you learned to speak with your parents reading you the dictionary beginning with the letter A.
Some do, some don't.
jQuery is a common way to learn to do front end programming. It saves a lot of time when used well. But it is important to extend the knowledge to core javascript and be able to write code when jQuery is not available (like when writing scripts to embed on different sites).