I was a book study conductor for several years. I found the studies excruciatingly boring. First, if you study as a family for the WT, you will have the paragraph read by your wife or kid. Then you ask the question and someone answers it. You look up every scripture even though you know what it says. The answer is always "textbook" correct as someone said.
Then you go to the meeting and if I was the reader, I had to read it again. Then you listen to the parrots read the answer, sometimes even having someone read the ENTIRE paragraph as his answer. Even if the person put it in his own words, if the article was boring, everyone died a second death. And maybe the conductor would elaborate or highlight a point that everyone already understood, further adding to the brain numbing.
At the end of the study, there were a few review questions, where everyone had to hear the question/answer thing AGAIN!! To add to the repetition, the brother saying the closing prayer might include a comment about some "new light" that we all learned in the WT study and thanking God (the FDS) for this great "gift".
THEN, some pioneer might start a discussion in the car going out in service about a new point learned that day. That would start more comments. And if the WT article was part one of two or three articles on the subject, you had to review what was learned the week before.
So you might end up discussing something 7 or 8 times before it finally died. And the irony might be that the "new light" wasn't understood or agreed with by many/most people because it was just another flip-flop (again). It was sheer agony.
Dumbing down? I'd say the studies were at a third grade level. Even new people would leave after the talk or tell me after the WT study that it was boring and "how did we tolerate it"? Heavy meds might help. It's no wonder that most people I was ever in service with would place the Awake mag. on top of the WT, since the WT had nothing of use in it for the public. (And usually for any JW either.)
What a waste of good trees!!