"A fool with a tool is still a fool."

The problem isn't with the notion of a daily standup, it's like you said... people just checking the boxes of "what I did yesterday/what I am working on today/here are my blockers" without understanding the purpose of the standup.

Here's the thing: the people who put together pointless meetings like this will never change. EVER. You tell them "this is what is wrong with the way you run standup, here is what to do instead" and they change the checklist... but you can NEVER get them to fix their thinking.

The people and orgs that excel with Agile were excelling without Agile. It just gave them a different, better way to be excellent. The people and orgs that were struggling without Agile will still struggle with it. Agile just gave them a different, potentially worse way to struggle.

J.Ja