Yes, the path most people will take today is from high-level languages and high-level abstractions, down to low level abstractions. It's not any better or worse than a bottom-up approach for learning. The fact that people are going down through the stack, trying to learn and understand things as they go is to be celebrated, not to be rued.

A top-down approach for learning makes logical and logistical sense in 2017, given the demand for developers operating on high-level abstractions. The bottom-up approach made sense, circa 1972 when C appeared. Neither approach is 'better', IMO.