It doesn't help that we equate knowledge with smarts. You can have all the degrees in the world and still be outwitted by someone with a GED. Our education needs MASSIVE overhauls starting with tailored learning beginning at age 12. More classes should be hands on and kids should learn at least two or three skill trades before becoming an "adult". And that's another thing, when does "adulthood" start? If you can't drink and smoke until 21, then it stands to reason you should be an adult at 21. OR, we START the road to adulthood at 12/13 giving them access to beer and wine within reasonable amounts and not allowing hard shit until 16-18. Europeans figured out that allowing youth to drink early breeds a more mature drinking culture in the long run. Whereas here in America it's frat parties and other pent up stupidity. No it's not perfect, obviously they still party down in Europe, but it's more contained and evolved so to speak.

Anyway, point being, our education is purpose driven to dumb down kids and to preoccupy the ones capable of advanced learning with more complex focuses to keep them distracted. We don't teach kids their rights in school and we often try to stoke the ones more prone to criminal activity into going into the private prison pipeline. This may sound like leftist bullshit and if your knee jerk reaction is to see it as such, well, you're wrong. The data is there to back it up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-prison_pipeline