Interesting points. I think there's definitely something to be said for education curricula having lost the plot. It seems more and more to me that a lot of the first few years of college is really just teaching things you should have already learned in high school.

I also think we've drifted towards thinking that all education takes place in a school. Things like parental mentorship, working a job while in school, extracurricular reading or building things for fun are falling a bit by the wayside. Education is (or should be) a lot more than attending lectures in a classroom, even at the middle school and high school levels.

My GF is a school counselor, and one of her constant sources of frustration is how much stuff is getting pushed onto schools to do which really isn't in their provenance.