I think the problem is very deep. In a sense, the entire human race is collectively to blame.
As animals, our instincts were honed by many years (centuries? eons?) of adaptation. Survival was hard, food was scare, hazards of many kinds were in abundance.
Then...well, I don't know *exactly* what happened, but we got *organized*. We began to farm, domesticate our food supply, and beasts of burden, build houses, and communicate using language. We found a way to "beat the odds" and experienced a radical shift in the way we lived: not as animals, dependent on whatever providence brought; but with the luxury to plan, to choose, to strategize. We began shaping the planet, rather than the other way around.
In the space of a few short millenia, technology developed that let's us minimize labor expenditures, allowing many lives to be lead without requiring much hard labor at all. Instead of hunting, skinning, and boiling a stew in the communal pot, all one needs to do nowadays is grab a microwave dinner from the freezer and nuke it for a minute. Even as little as 150 years ago, this would have been prohibitively expensive.
In the wake of this, we have gotten...lazy. We expect our lives to be easy and trouble-free. The emphasis is on hedonism and convenience, we want it all, we want it now. Our schools are no exception; if it were possible to just down-load an education, it'd be happening.
Unfortunately, our brains have not been upgraded to keep pace with all this technological wonderment. We still learn the "old-fashioned" way: through experience. And too few people are asking the relevant question: should we be doing this, just because we CAN?
It is likely our rapacious desire for consumption will end abruptly with wide-spread shortages of materials for consumption. Wars over oil supplies will seem trivial once people start fighting over water, or breathable air. We are creatures of habit (habits being one of the "advantages" that allowed us to thrive in the first place), and will undoubtedly continue on our current course until it is no longer possible to do so.
Our schools are no exception: largely government-run, they share the same short-sightedness of your average human, perhaps even worse, because the current generation is taught by the previous, and there is a lag between what needs to be learned, and what is able to be taught.
One fine day, there will be nothing left to do, but for grandparents to apologize for the world they have left their grand-children, and it will be too little, too late.
Some things that would help: we need to be more aware of the treasure hidden in our past; for example, the message contained in a Greek tragedy is just as relevant today, as when it was written. History is important, the only hope we have for the future is to honestly look at where we came from, and where we are headed. Not a "white-wash" of how glorious THIS culture is, because WE happen to be in it, but an honest evaluation of what happened, and why.
We should also have a greater appreciation of the genius that allowed us to be where we are. For example, the Romans were competent engineers, and one should not take for granted that "newer" is necessarily "better".
I read a fabulous quote from some mathematician whose name escapes me now, but he said, in essence, that he had achieved what he did, by reading the Masters, not the students. If you want to learn how to use the English language as an artist does, read Shakespeare, or any of the great poets. If you want to be a mathematician, read papers and books by those who know of what they speak: modern textbooks, are, by and large, hack-work, and barely worth the paper they are printed on.
Another thing: if you are doing whatever everyone else else, you know only what is common knowledge, and there is not a whole lot to recommend, there. Dare to be different, to explore something new, for yourself. Following the crowd is fine behavior for a herd animal, it is demeaning for humans to act in such a fashion. The idea that "learning" is something that can be done, assembly-line style is, frankly, dehumanizing. If you know math (or science, or history, or music, or whatever) you ought to be able to "pass the test", but if you think that "passing the test" means you actually know something, you are fooling yourself. And many of us ARE fooling ourselves, because to acknowledge we are lacking in drive, in determination, in knowledge, in basic decency and humanity is...inconvenient. And remedying it is...time-consuming. Which means we can't have it all, and certainly not now.
