Problem is, I doubt many people overcome this hurdle - that "juvenile trick" is pretty much the defining quality of articles and books we consume.
Indeed. We need better English teachers. :-)
We won't get them unless we appreciate both teaching and the Humanities more than we do. I was good, but by no means the best (75th percentile, maybe?). I loved doing it, but changed careers to IT because I'd never have been able to support a family on what I was paid.
A culture which pays teachers poorly, treats them with disrespect ("those who can do..."), and relentlessly emphasizes STEM, STEM, STEM is one that's slowly killing itself, no matter how much shiny tech at inflated valuations it turns out.
I don't know how it is elsewhere, but where I grew up we had minimum word limits on pretty much all essays. Doesn't matter if you can say what you want to say in 6 sentences, you need 4000 words or 2 pages or whatever metric they use
Oh, of course. Length requirements are important, for the reasons I explained up-thread. However, if teachers accept any old thing ("padding") to reach the count, then that metric is arbitrary, which (justifiably!) makes students cynical.
If a student can say all that they want to say in six sentences then they need to learn more about the topic, and / or think through their opinions more deeply. Teachers who do not take that next step are bad teachers, because they are neither modeling nor encouraging critical thinking.
In some places the majority of teachers are themselves incapable of critical thinking, because those who are leave the profession (or the locale) for the reasons in my comment above.
[Edit to add]: Please note that I say bad teachers, not bad people. Same goes for students / citizens, as well. The ability to think critically is not a determinate of moral worth, and in some ways and some cases might be anti-correlated.