I couldn't disagree more. Modern democracies only work if large parts of the population are educated enough to hold informed opinions on matters of public policy, at least in the topics they care about. A lot of the problems we see today can fundamentally be attributed to the failure of reaching that goal and leaving room for demagogues, misinformation and outright lies to manipulate people into voting against their own interest and the common good.

As you point out, school fails horrifically at this goal.

It teaches a huge amount of stuff in a manner that does not help at all in forming opinions on public policy while failing to instil the most important basics, such as an understanding of sampling bias and appreciation for nation-level scale.