On the contrary, when I was in high school we had one class dedicated to digital electronics and it revolved around breadboard circuitry. You only had 30 minutes/day to tinker with the physical hardware then it had to be disassembled for the next class. Simulations like this are more approachable then schematics and would have been great for tinkering outside of class.

When I was a young child it was cool to play with circuitry (dad did some electronics) but as soon as I encountered components of different shape (a capacitor that looks like a resistor) it stopped making sense to me. thinking in schematics early is key