II totally agree as a fellow trainer and I often feel sad when I see my students eyes glaze over as I show them the list of themes and plug-ins.

I think the fact that WP has so much choice that it can be so overwhelming that most feel like they just want something to just work like wiz a squarespace.

At our training center, here in Bangkok, we make sure they feel confident around entry level HTML and CSS as well as Photoediting before tackling WP and that really helped shave off some radians from the learning curve.

As Morton said it is the purpose behind the website not the tool that learners need to teaming focused at achieving. Loved that advice!