Like many other Chinese have replied, we do use and learned pinyin in school and use it to learn how to pronounce new characters. All the Chinese dictionary has pinyin in it.
This is especially important because each region in China speak their own dialect of Chinese and sometimes it is almost an complete different language.
As an Cantonese growing up, pinyin was my way of learning Chinese.
Pinyin to us is basically International Phonetic Alphabet to English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabe...
This is especially important because each region in China speak their own dialect of Chinese and sometimes it is almost an complete different language. As an Cantonese growing up, pinyin was my way of learning Chinese.