The whole "lets use jQuery without learning Javascript" thing didn't work out so well for the community.
I can see the same path for an HTML/CSS beginner.
As I learned I wrote a lot of code I'm not too proud of, looking back on it. But I grew to learn and love Javascript and I honestly have jQuery to thank for that.
Of course the problem with that is the code you ARE proud of rapidly becomes the kind you aren't proud of as you learn more.
Actually a bit is being kind. It's rare to come across a site not using jQuery. I write a fair few personal scraping scripts and it's very rare I actually have to add jQuery.
Actually, in many ways I think learning jQuery before learning vanilla javascript can be an advantage. jQuery is heavy on functional programming techniques, list comprehensions, and such-like. As long as you learn well and don't cut corners I don't see any problems with "learning jQuery" on its own.
jQuery has two big benefits for me: cutting down on verbosity a bit, and on making a cross-browser solution possible. For the latter various polyfills solve the problem effectively, but the verbosity problem still remains.
The handwritten code I used to use for element detection was a thing of evil, that kept on getting cut-and-pasted around because it worked.
The conciseness and cleanness of using jQuery was a welcome change.