I teach that kind of stuff at university — I would never think about teaching JS before HTML and CSS. Students should understand what ia possible with HTML and CSS alone. Then we look at the server side, and understand infrastructure and how servers can potentially deliver different HTML and CSS depending on the request and then we start introducing JS as a means to replace serverside stuff, to enrich HTNL and CSS or to interact with REST APIs without reloading the page etc.

But understanding the infrastructure is key here. Understanding the "M" in HTML, understanding the "C" in CSS, understanding http etc.