Ah, education... this is one of my big bugbears, and it's a really big one, so bear with me :) The issue is multi-faceted:
* Stifled curriculum; Here in the UK the curriculum is pretty shoddy. My mother is a primary teacher and trying to innovate her teaching is extremely difficult - the curriculum simply cannot cope. It is unwieldy and disjointed, and almost without exception tech innovators do not understand how it works and how to accomodate it (n.b. this is not simply a tech problem, my dad runs a successful mobile planetarium business and, through my mother, knows how to accomodate what is needed - their competitors pop up every few months and quickly flounder because school level education is unlike any other learning ever conceived :)).
* Teacher apathy; not all of them, but enough. They follow the worksheets and guidelines and don't "disrupt" the system enough to make a serious change. You'll get a few great ones in each school (I'm sure we all have some memorable/fav teachers) but most are simply either bad or good teachers, and not innovators.
* Teacher luddites; even the very best teachers can be luddites (meant in a polite sense). Getting them to accept and use new tech is hard enough, but when the teachers often have no IT skills (this is a problem that will be fixed in a few generations, I guess) themselves there is simply no chance :)
* Teaching unions; don't give a crap about education (partly understandable), and exercise their power to interfere a little too much.
* Bureaucracy; you honestly have never experienced bureaucracy until you have ever tried to do anything in a school. This varies greatly, and can exist as stupid rules through to silly government policy (the one at the moment is that my mum has to "evidence" and present all the work her kids do during the year... I guess to prove they aren't just playing with lego all day???)
* Funding; there is none. Most good teachers (esp. primary teachers) will fund a lot of the non-curriculum ideas they have (such as, science clubs) as there is no money. And when there is it is spent shoddily. For example; mums school have digital whiteboards and laptops for all the teachers to hook up. In the last three years they have had three suppliers (all council approved contracts..) - all of who have fucked up in various ways and been replaced. Most of the whiteboards fail at some point (v. poor quality), the laptops are slow, clunky and a mess. They can never get anything done (Mum has a pile of CDs/DVDs with educational programs that she can't "ta da" install on the laptop to test....)
tl;dr: education is a mess because previous good education has tried and failed (dismally) to adopt modern ideas and adapt to modern society. There is no money, innovation or interest in educating our children.
(n.b. not all teachers are at fault. In fact; a large number will raise these exact issues if you ask them, but are completely stumped as to how to fix and disrupt it. Innovation is desperately needed - but be prepared for a long long slog :))
* Stifled curriculum; Here in the UK the curriculum is pretty shoddy. My mother is a primary teacher and trying to innovate her teaching is extremely difficult - the curriculum simply cannot cope. It is unwieldy and disjointed, and almost without exception tech innovators do not understand how it works and how to accomodate it (n.b. this is not simply a tech problem, my dad runs a successful mobile planetarium business and, through my mother, knows how to accomodate what is needed - their competitors pop up every few months and quickly flounder because school level education is unlike any other learning ever conceived :)).
* Teacher apathy; not all of them, but enough. They follow the worksheets and guidelines and don't "disrupt" the system enough to make a serious change. You'll get a few great ones in each school (I'm sure we all have some memorable/fav teachers) but most are simply either bad or good teachers, and not innovators.
* Teacher luddites; even the very best teachers can be luddites (meant in a polite sense). Getting them to accept and use new tech is hard enough, but when the teachers often have no IT skills (this is a problem that will be fixed in a few generations, I guess) themselves there is simply no chance :)
* Teaching unions; don't give a crap about education (partly understandable), and exercise their power to interfere a little too much.
* Bureaucracy; you honestly have never experienced bureaucracy until you have ever tried to do anything in a school. This varies greatly, and can exist as stupid rules through to silly government policy (the one at the moment is that my mum has to "evidence" and present all the work her kids do during the year... I guess to prove they aren't just playing with lego all day???)
* Funding; there is none. Most good teachers (esp. primary teachers) will fund a lot of the non-curriculum ideas they have (such as, science clubs) as there is no money. And when there is it is spent shoddily. For example; mums school have digital whiteboards and laptops for all the teachers to hook up. In the last three years they have had three suppliers (all council approved contracts..) - all of who have fucked up in various ways and been replaced. Most of the whiteboards fail at some point (v. poor quality), the laptops are slow, clunky and a mess. They can never get anything done (Mum has a pile of CDs/DVDs with educational programs that she can't "ta da" install on the laptop to test....)
tl;dr: education is a mess because previous good education has tried and failed (dismally) to adopt modern ideas and adapt to modern society. There is no money, innovation or interest in educating our children.
(n.b. not all teachers are at fault. In fact; a large number will raise these exact issues if you ask them, but are completely stumped as to how to fix and disrupt it. Innovation is desperately needed - but be prepared for a long long slog :))