That we get any STEM talent at all is a quirk of selection and survivor bias, which very likely happens in spite of public education methods, not because of it.

That we get any STEM talent at all is a quirk of selection and survivor bias, which very likely happens in spite of public education methods, not because of it. I have had some truly incredible teachers, but their ability was pareto distributed. Great teachers have nothing in common with the long tail of inadequate ones. The problem they are trying to solve is how to produce citizens with math skills while preserving the system of one generic teacher talking at 30+ kids with increasingly heterogeneous experiences confined in a room and sitting at desks. It's a stupid problem. The concrete math and geometry you learn from things like music, cooking, carpentry, navigation, engine repair, gambling, and building a basic physical experimental apparatus could take a child "up" to differential calculus in less than a couple of years. We have to look at who becomes a teacher and whether they are transmitting their tangible skills to students, or if they are themselves physically helpless talking heads for a received curriculum. Today, I meet ostensibly educated people and their defining characteristic is they have been institutionalized. Whether it was in grad school or prison is just a matter of taste.