4Spooled, what you are witnessing is not stupidity at all. What you are actually seeing is an ingrained respect for authority and learning by rote.
They are in a classic "Double Bind" situation.
1. Your teacher has told you to do something. If your teacher has told you it is to be done then it must be possible to do it that way. All wisdom comes from the teacher.
2. But now there is a problem and I cannot do what my teacher has told me to do! But this is wrong - see item one. How do I conform to her wishes??????
We are now in an infinite loop.
Furthermore, in at least one non english speaking country, initiative is regarded with very very deep suspicion. There is a very long racial memory that those that use initiative, and do not follow the herd, get their heads cut off.
I've seen the same thing happen in the last year of my engineering degree. A lecturer says "well, thats the current state of knowledge in this subject. From now on we will simply speculate about the various current research directions". Some of the non english seaking Engineering students simply wnet into a loop because they are used to rote learning. Others grabbed the bull by the horns and used their own initiative.