However, during school most people have their ability to recognize patterns at all severely diminished due to “gotcha” questions on tests, questions that specifically are designed to catch you out using pattern recognition.

The joke of that technique is these questions become a pattern unto themselves. Despite middling grades in high school, I aced a number of standardized tests in large part because the "bullshit" gotcha questions stuck out like sore thumbs to me.

This trains the person to not trust their pattern recognition

Again, I throw back to the person listening for conversational queues in the banging of their washing machine.

You shouldn't trust pattern recognition on its face. It's deceptively easy to pick out a false signal in white noise.

There's more to be said on this, with certain schools (particularly religious or highly ideological academic settings) focusing on uncritical acceptance of official dogma or a state-designated axiomatic understanding of a certain subject. But that goes above and beyond teaching people not to trust their pattern recognition skills.