Fair enough, but I feel like I've learned more about actual atoms by reading Arstechnica as an adult than I did during high school chemistry class - I may be re

Fair enough, but I feel like I've learned more about actual atoms by reading Arstechnica as an adult than I did during high school chemistry class - I may be remembering incorrectly, but my recollection is that we learned antiquated models of the atom as a history lesson / collection of historical and no longer true facts. I'm sure that the science was mentioned, but we didn't focus on any more generalizeable scientific skills. In my own field (statistics), I think that this is quite common. We commonly teach ANOVA and linear regression separately because it's always been taught that way, despite the fact that a good appreciation of linear models is far more general, useful, and intuitive.