"math you need to be an electrician for people who failed math class" seems like a reaction from within the model of the prevailing philosophy - more abstraction-first book learning. Whereas addressing a different learning style would be more like: here are the physical skills you need to be an electrician, here are more classes working your way up to build larger and larger things, and oh by the way now that you've developed the skills of building things while taking direction from someone telling you how to build it, let's try to teach you how to figure out how to build it yourself.
And I'm just wondering if the safety-and-HR-uber-alles dynamic has stamped out a lot a of that physical-skills-first in favor of like, dry lessons trying to tell people all about wiring before they actually get to play with wires. Thus making it so the same people who succeed here are the traditionally "smart" ones that can take abstract knowledge and store it for later, before having something tangible to apply it to.
(electrician might not be the best example for this because the differences between good/unsafe/unpowered wiring are still pretty abstract, but hopefully you can see the point regardless)
And I'm just wondering if the safety-and-HR-uber-alles dynamic has stamped out a lot a of that physical-skills-first in favor of like, dry lessons trying to tell people all about wiring before they actually get to play with wires. Thus making it so the same people who succeed here are the traditionally "smart" ones that can take abstract knowledge and store it for later, before having something tangible to apply it to.
(electrician might not be the best example for this because the differences between good/unsafe/unpowered wiring are still pretty abstract, but hopefully you can see the point regardless)