barit1 - and ain't that the truth of life in general .... ?
Two problems come to mind immediately -
(a) we all are subject (regardless of our walk of life) to developing expectations which are unrealistic .. in the case of aircraft that occurs when we confuse pretty good reliability and safety (which is what we have in general) with absolute versions (which don't exist). Like it or not, life (in general) and aircraft (in particular) are subject to statistics and probabilities. The aim of the game is to load the dice our way to the extent reasonably achieveable.
(b) ever present cost pressures put ever increasing pressures on the training world with the result that the younger flying folk perhaps don't have some of the useful skills in which the old codgers were drilled. Button pressing is an essential skill in the present flying world .. but it would be nice to think that the basics underpin the gloss.
Where is the optimum solution ? .. beats me.
For the aviation fraternity, PPRuNe provides for a sounding board environment along with an extremely useful background knowledge training tool. In the several technically biased forums there are some very, very well qualified and knowledgeable folk who give freely of their hard won experience to the benefit of the new folk.