For beginners, it's critical to learn concepts of software development instead of the syntax memorization and regurgitation that seems popular to collect like scout badges. The fewer syntaxes one has to learn in the beginning, to do the most, the better. To keep a list to the minimum, I'd probably start with HTML, a bit of CSS, and then go to Javascript to teach web and then mobile development.
I hear you on that -- I've been looking for a path that starts with the best-structured languages, as vehicles for learning the more powerful concepts: static vs dynamic typing et al. So, Golang, Python, or Typescript. School in question is a bit behind the curve -- "PHP/MySQL".
PHP/MySQL is fine to learn to build web apps too. The problem is when you have to learn 30 different things in some languages to create your own stack (Ruby, node, etc) for beginners.
I am not a day to day js framework/backend guy.