Hm, perhaps your state school is "less unrespected" than mine, but my CS program had a very real funnel from "couldn't hack it in Programming 1" to "couldn't hack it in Calculus 2" to "couldn't hack it in Data Structures and Algorithms" to "couldn't hack it in one particular professor's mandatory upper-level courses" to "tripped on their gown."

I digressed a little. Point being: while I'm unsurprised that some % of people from a broader range of abilities couldn't get functions or iteration or inheritance or whathaveyou to stick, I'd be very surprised if ANY % of the culled-by-18 right end of the Bell curve couldn't grok both fundamental concepts and any relevant part of the standard documentation (on which we appear to be in agreement.)