There are significant numbers of kids who have been trained not to want to learn in America because America is deeply anti-intellectual and teaching to excessiv

There are significant numbers of kids who have been trained not to want to learn in America because America is deeply anti-intellectual and teaching to excessive standardized testing drives what little curiosity there was out of greater numbers of them. As a result of this and wildly inappropriate teacher performance measurement, the really good teachers who inspire kids get frustrated and leave. As a result, most American public schools are watered-down, don't care about excellence, and are de facto prison daycare with absurd levels of performative testing pantomiming a quality education while being anything but. It's not the teachers' fault but the parents, voters, school districts, state education boards, and past US presidents who all share in culpability.