The schools need to come up with ways to teach more material, more rigorously, in fewer years -- at least for the intelligent students with healthy upbringings.

The schools need to come up with ways to teach more material, more rigorously, in fewer years -- at least for the intelligent students with healthy upbringings. You cannot expect the school system to function as psychological counselors, remedial educators, baby-sitters, and rigorous educators all in one. Society's choice has been to take the first three and sacrifice the last one, as a result of which, students have more and more "work" imposed on them, with standards for excellence becoming steadily more inflated, without undergraduate-, postgraduate-, and professional-level outcomes improving linearly.