Your way sounds better.

They want to encourage self directed learning and I am glad they did. If nothing else, boredom becomes a good thing more often. The seeking begins and with that can often come some real learning and insight as it may be applied.

The pay is shit, so intelligent people decide to pursue other passions instead of teaching.

Also, the profession seems to attract the kind of people who like to exercise arbitrary authority over other people. Not a majority of teachers, but a substantial minority.

Once I realized these things, a lot of negative experiences I had with teachers made more sense. For what it's worth, I also had some great teachers along the way.

Similarly, the IQ test is flawed too. Neither are representative of intelligence or what is required to be a good teacher

That was the feeling I had after one week in a UK school through an exchange program. Because my original exchange partner quit on me after seeing my picture, I got assigned a different one who was 2 grades higher. I was pretty average in math back in Germany, but in that class, 2 years above mine (11th while I was 9th), their math riddle that was supposed to take them the whole week was solved by me in one lesson.

This was around 20 years ago, though.

I have a step-son who is (nearly) 13 and about to start seriously in on his GCSE's - the situation hasn't improved, the non-higher tier papers are just embarrassing, the foundational tier he could have done well by the time he was 10 - he likes maths and I always wished I'd pushed it harder when I was young but a spectacularly shitty home-life ensured while I did decent in my GCSE's I didn't do what I could have done - I make sure he doesn't have the same problem.