Education is as good as the student and the guide. When the guide goes wrong the pupil is lost at sea. American Education may have failed with public education being first built from the Prussian State model of education and second the ideas in the heads of school boards and curriculum experts. I am a product of public education for better or worse. I know some who went to private school all the way through college. They are better educated in some respects with solid grounding from their training, but educated barbarians remain barbarians. America is a large land with a small educated elite and a broadly half-educated population. Educated elite rise through the schools into public policy positions. Yale might be the most well known manufacturer of people entering public policy. The CIA hired Yale Men.
My complaint is regurgitation of facts is not education. Take Covid-19. Flu vanished. Masks fail. Lockdowns destroyed the economy. And educated people swear by the Faith.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/06/living_under_nazi_dictatorship.html
Austria in the Reich
During my 23 years of academic teaching in the US and in Europe, I made materials available for my students to serve them as bases for making up their own minds. It frequently happened that at the end of the semester, they asked me what I thought. My answer was usually (not necessarily exclusively) that "It doesn't matter what I think; in your life, what matters is what YOU think." We usually left it at that. :)
I used to tell me students, "If you want a degree, go to college; if you want to expand your knowledge, go to the library."
Also, I started each semester by telling my students, "I don't teach; you teach yourself. However, I create an environment and supply materials that will enable you to do it efficiently."
As someone who is mostly self-educated (by the time I made it to college, I had read a lot more than the required amount at the university) in both the US and in Europe, I juxtapose the dogmatic approach of European "education" (manifesting itself by students asking the teacher, "is this solution correct" in ideological subjects) and the laissez-faire approach in the US that usually doesn't lead anywhere, unless the student gets sick of it and makes up his own mind.
Either way, "education" today means indoctrination.
Just like universities have always been about status, "elite" universities have been about networking. As the "elite" has changed its status, so did the universities.
The "flu" never even existed as a communicable disease... The muzzles managed to torture and sicken the masses into full compliance. Small- and medium-sized businesses were destroyed, but as it turns out, that was only the appetizer for the upcoming food riots.
The great divider is not "education," but the acceptance of personal responsibility for one's decisions and acts.