i have a lot of thoughts on this as the son of a public school teacher and a private school principal, along with the husband to an public school elementary school reading specialist for kids with learning disabilities or dyslexia. i am not going to do a "Surly Hijack™®" on the Trump's America thread with a full exploration, i'll just quickly note that while there is obviously nothing objectionable about your post in concept, it ignores both the reality of what primary education's mission capabilities are in terms of arming as wide a swath of children as possible with fundamental building blocks to begin the process of critical thinking (arithmetic, fundamental science concepts, reading, etc...), as well as the unfortunate reality of what would happen if one attempted to impose the school of athens on the wider population of children and not self-segregated smaller communities of predisposed children that have both the contextual privilege (economically, family) and the innate desire to be exceptionally driven.
it is, of course, what we all want and strive for but it betrays a lack of experience in both sides of the primary education machinations to believe that the reason "the system" is not ideal has nothing to do with being forced to integrate accommodation for an extreme breadth of circumstances in the human condition including the fact that not all students are exceptional and some students are there and the school is simply trying to ensure their literal survival...and everything in between. the system has evolved to what it is as a reflection of the human condition because we made a decision as a society some time back that all kids need to be educated...not just the ones that are privileged enough to be economically positioned to or that are elevated thinkers. it is easy to run the school of athens when your pupils are plato, aristotle, thomas aquinas, kant, copernicus, galileo, hume, newton, tesla, lao tzu, and descartes. the system (and unfortunately the outcomes) is going to be impacted by having to also deal with the broader spectrum. (hence the disingenuous nature of the state's voucher bullshit/welfare for the upper middle class)
i don't share any hostility towards your thoughts here and i don't disagree that we have unfortunate consequences of having to force a more normally distributed system on a non-normally distributed population in primary education but it is a bit fantastical to espouse these idealized learning proposals without acknowledging the vast array of realities that undermine their effectuation and prospect of broader success.
and of course, none of that is to say anything about the hostility towards public education and the lack of valuing teachers altogether in a way that inspires more exceptional people to take that path. imagine being a high quality teacher in oklahoma and the superintendent of schools shoots a dumbass phone video in his car in which he ties the new orleans terrorist attack to you.