History is certainly a better example, but dates DO matter - You can't talk about cause and effect if you don't know when things happened. Now perhaps the minutiae isn't quite as important - but what better way to learn the chronology than knowing the dates? It's fundamental to it.

> to see that most people can’t do it because it’s taught and tested poorly.

Or they just don't want to learn it. Some people don't like math. Or maybe people are lazy - they like it but can't overcome procrastination to really learn it. Or they are more focused on something else, like I was as an adolescent (computers.) There are certainly people who got sick, or went on vacation during that week of school, etc.

My point is, we always like to blame things that aren't actionable, i.e. "the system." It was just "taught poorly." There are certainly cases of that being the truth, but if you look at the time constraints and all other details, it's hard to just blame the system. How do you actually fix the system?