Sorry, old comment, but:

There are cases where understanding something may lower your status or at least seem so, and this may play a role. About 10-20 years ago, it was computers, understanding them made you a geek with everything that comes with it. So people were very proudly saying "I am not a techie, I just use it but I don't understand it!" meaning roughly that their social status is largely higher than that of techies. Of course they did not mean to have higher social status than Bill Gates, rather than just the local IT department.

There is something similar going on with young men being really proud about not knowing to cook, as this brag suggests either affording to eat out or being really attractive and always finding girlfriends who like to cook.

The point is, ignorance can be a luxury and that way a pretty big status signal, affording to not understand certain things can be like that. On a parallel Earth, I could imagine the richest kids even claiming they cannot read because it would be a huge "I don't need to work to survive!" message.

The point is, this can easily he internalized. "I don't want to look like the kind of person who needs this knowledge" -> "I don't understand"