In the context of education (and pseudo-polemic): I don’t think it’s too much of a leap to equate assiduity with a lack of imagination. And it’s often used as a actual proper reason like given by academic officials and stuff as to why girls do better at every level of education bar getting firsts at uni…

Really, if we’re going to start nit-picking horribly hasty generalisations, none of us will have any fun :) Next thing we won’t be able to call politicians snivelling snake-hearted swine on the flimsy grounds that they’re probably above-average human beings. And no one needs that.

Incidentally, what’s the logic behind the second quotation mark in your example? :)

And that is, if I may say, a much dafter mistake than using “it’s” as the possessive form, which is after all, at least semi-logical, given the use of the apostrophe in other possessive forms – e.g. “Katherine’s grammar was better than “Paul’s”.

(in short: students must now know how to read, write and add up to pass exams. Bonus.)