If you teach people by rote and get them to repeat homework or an exam until they pass, you just make people who are using memory rather than understanding to pass. This is very fragile, and as soon as you change anything about the test they are like that ant in A Bug's Life who was irrevocably lost when an obstacle was in their path until they were guided round that specific obstacle.
Students are just as feckless now as they were in our day or Plato's. No better, no worse. It's how they were taught in this particular school that failed them IMO. I was in a few schools during my education (father in forces), and they all had quite different teaching methods, I suspect this instilled a more general understanding rather than the sometimes singular focus of any particular school.
(, Wed 13 May 2026, 10:50, Reply)