> They slog through the one path available, get to a point of understanding, and then they're so exhausted and relieved that they got there at all that they cling to their mountaintop of success for dear life and refuse to contemplate re-taking that journey by some different path.
Alternative hypothesis: We've selected a group overrepresenting people for whom that particular approach was effective, and that's precisely the group of people least equipped to come up with a different framing. (These aren't really in contradiction though, both could be true.)
Personally, I doubt that. We throw essentially a random set of people at various university courses. I studied Physics and Computer Science, but I very nearly pricked Chemistry and was tempted by some form of Engineering as well. My fell students were all above some watermark required for entry, but were very "neurodiverse" in an abstract sense of the word.
> They slog through the one path available, get to a point of understanding, and then they're so exhausted and relieved that they got there at all that they cling to their mountaintop of success for dear life and refuse to contemplate re-taking that journey by some different path.
Alternative hypothesis: We've selected a group overrepresenting people for whom that particular approach was effective, and that's precisely the group of people least equipped to come up with a different framing. (These aren't really in contradiction though, both could be true.)