Challenging ones teachers
If I may briefly chime in and then return to lurking: In my own profession of medicine we strongly encourage students to challenge old dogmas and procedures; in so doing they really can wrap their heads around why "the rules" evolved the way they did. More often than not, in surgery/aviation lessons learned are hard won, and sometimes fatally so. Rules of thumb can help when one is overwhelmed with sensory input from sophisticated technology.
As time goes on, and our understanding of deeper mechanisms evolves, so can our hard learned drills and emergency procedures. IMHO this needs to happen slowly and cautiously with attention to what has been learned in the past.