Do kids actually learn about power factor?

That point aside, while an intuitive understanding is nice, power factor is really a mathematical construct arising from the multiplication of two out-of-phase sinusoids (i.e. voltage and current).

I think to really understand active / reactive power and pf, you need to look at the maths. It's really not that difficult. And you certainly don't need to know vector calculus, merely high school trig.