I struggled installing my nest, despite having electronics and wiring experience, because of the age old documentation problem. My wires at the wall are both mislabeled and miscolored, and the thermostat controller at the boiler doesn't have a diagram.

One model of Nest works fine with two wires, but the cheaper and assumed less power hungry (less features) Nest does not.

But back to your point, I think we should be teaching much more hands-on and life-oriented tasks at the high-school level.