Parent-facilitated autodidactism is where it's at.
Hey, C.O., yours seems like a good launching point for my “old angry white guy” opinion:
Public schools? I agree with you. Kids are no longer taught to think.* They can’t do math in their heads. They depend on a computer to give them the answers, and don’t know when it looks right or not. When Apollo went to the moon, they checked the computer calculations (which someone on the team programmed) with SLIDE RULES. They had to THINK. The engineers had more faith in their own heads than they did in computers. For Pete’s sake, Neil Armstrong had to decide to ignore the LM computer warnings and take over manually to land!
*A few years ago, I tutored a high-schooler in Physics. He was terribly confused by his text book. The book had taken every situation possible and spoon-fed an equation for each type of problem. They figured it was easier for the kids to memorize which one of the two dozen equations to use instead of understanding the situations.
I explained the basics, and showed him that all the equations in the book were taken from FOUR laws of motion, and if he knew those four, he could solve them for what he needed. The light bulb went off and he went to the Naval Academy.