Teaching Javascript as part of a core curriculum (i.e. a course everybody has to take) would be a lost cause, because the syntax makes it completely unapproacha

Teaching Javascript as part of a core curriculum (i.e. a course everybody has to take) would be a lost cause, because the syntax makes it completely unapproachable. And that's before you have to explain how some interactive functionality exists in plain HTML/CSS (accordions, hover states, animations), but in order to attach them to button clicks, you suddenly need a programming language with a largely unforgiving syntax (an errant comma after the final object property) and behaviours (event.preventDefault). And if you manage to wade through all that, and are ready to build a modern program, you would then be told to learn about React, the shadow DOM and server-side JS, another 3 things that don't look like anything you previously learned.