And what exactly does sink into them? What do they really learn? Would Chesterton agree with Robin Hanson that the explicit curricula is just subterfuge for ingraining in students obedience to authority?

And from a non cynical angle, this can be said of all learning. To be able to learn something, you have to have reasonably understood its prerequisites. So naturally, if you look at something you have just taught someone, it would seem like all you have managed to teach them was the assumptions.