As I get older I am starting to think that there are some things people just aren’t ready to learn at a given moment in time.

I kept all of my engineering textbooks and there have been concepts in them that never made sense when they were taught in school but ten years later I re-read them and things click like they never did when I was learning them years ago.

I think one of the tragedies of the public schools is that all the kids are expected to learn certain things at specific ages and grade levels, and for some kids they’re just not quite ready.

That doesn’t mean they won’t be ready in the future. But they will get a failing grade and the associated feeling of “I must be dumb.” And I think that often changes the trajectory of their lives as you described, often in negative ways.