Don't you think it would be much easier to teach e.g. astrology or medieval scholastics if you want to produce a stream of mediocre workers that support power?

Don't you think it would be much easier to teach e.g. astrology or medieval scholastics if you want to produce a stream of mediocre workers that support power? Dictatorships relied on those kind of methods to keep the people in line. We teach math just in case someone gets it, not to make everybody understand it deeply. And we don't only teach maths, but also languages, geography, biology, physics and all the rest. The system is far from perfect, but there are not enough people to teach everybody well. Yet here we are: people are fairly well educated, we can create mRNA vaccins, build tiny supercomputers, and huge vertically landing rockets, and today we read about the relation between one-way functions and Kolgomorov complexity. I think the situation is not that bleak, although the golden age of education might indeed be behind us.