Oh, they can be every bit as whacky. There's quite an anti-educational undertone in significant sections of the society, mostly based on the fact that everyone's dripping in oil money. The popular idiom here is "smile, you're Saudi". KSA employs well over 9,000,000 migrant workers (a third of the total population) and they provide basically all of the labour force. It is exceptionally rare to see an ethnic Saudi doing any kind of actual job outside of the police or armed services. I work in a couple of large universities - there are literally no Saudis on staff bellow management positions. All the teachers are from Egypt, Jordan or the Philippines - and "Bangladeshi" is literally a synonym for cleaner here, even though most of them aren't from Bangladesh.
Saudi is an incredibly affluent, tribal society (80% of my students are Al-Zarani, the rest are Al-Maliki). You get paid well over a living wage to attend university (aptitude optional) for as many years as you can put up with it, after which your tribe will find you something to do and make sure you're comfortable. Because of this, a significant minority of parents take the view of: "I don't care about education, I just want to teach my children how to pray and that's all".
Prayer is basically mandatory here, which is isn't in the rest of the region. Technicaly the law only applies to muslims, but I'm the whitest guy on the planet, and even I try to stay away from the mosque during prayer hours because someone will come and give me shit for not participating.
