This touches on another difference between Real Life (tm) and School.
In School, curriculum can be seen as historical knowledge handed down to generations. The age at which something was discovered is a clue as to how settled it is and how "ritualized" it is. ABC's are pretty old. The alphabet and arithmetic are 10000+ years old.
Geometry and History are 2000+ years old. Algebra and Literary Criticism are 500 years old.
Mechanics and Calculus are 300 years old.
And so on.
Its not until you get into Quantum Mechanics or CompuSci Or Genetics or Medicine that you get into the 20th century.
As a result, the knowledge is handed to kids and much if not all of the excercises are cut and dried with specific answers. Further, the instructors are plowing ground they have been over hundreds of times.
Where is the room for uncertainty and doubt? For incremental advancment to understanding?
We trade speed of advancement for effort of discovery - which is fine - but we lose the ability to press on and find out for ourselves.
Pressing on is a skill that has to be developed and it takes time to learn do this. A really smart kid who has never done this is totally unable to proceed where a less bright kid who has always struggled will succeed.
Perfectionism in the pursuit of canned activities - of ritualized rote learning - rather than struggling through something that requires time and effort with uncertainty and lots of false paths - is the real danger. The former type of perfectionism makes for a very brittle psyche.
