Perhaps you are correct. I don't remember the order in which I learned various concepts but I probably learned about degrees before pi and certainly before trig.

Since radians involve irrational numbers I can understand it being more difficult to learn than degrees. However degrees are a completely arbitrary unit that are used for historical reasons.

Getting stuck thinking in degrees hindered my ability to understand trigonometry, and I don't think I'm alone. It is my belief that teaching trig using radians would be less confusing than teaching trig using degrees first, then radians (as was my experience). With degrees there is no direct correlation between 90 degrees and the values of the trig functions which leads to people simply memorizing values. The same is true (to a lesser extent) when using 2 pi.