An ORM saves experienced SQL users from having to write boilerplate SQL and hack on their own garbage ORM, which is what any large project ends up doing, attempting to compose queries and filters in vain.
I have never ever heard of ORMs as an argument to avoid learning SQL, and AFAIK no author of well-known ORMs holds that opinion.
The problem with ORMs, as I see it, is that their abstraction is typically too high level and rarely offers you an intermediate layer to let you work around the leaks.
So you often have:
ORM -> SQL
ORM -> private query-builder API -> SQL
ORM -> public query-builder API -> public SQL-like abstraction -> SQLI don’t mind much - I get to look like a hero to my manager making their queries orders of magnitude faster. But if someone can’t be bothered to write SQL, they for sure will not bother looking up ways to hint the ORM.
Literally every pro-ORM dev that I've ever worked with was so incredibly weak with basic SQL fundamentals that I must conclude that they preferred ORMs simply due to a reluctance to learn SQL.