I agree with this 100% - the education system back then was based on the industrial age ; for factory workers, extremely repetitive tasks, so the education system was never designed to test critical thinking or the use of the knowledge, it was only meant to test memory .
And they are told that they need this type of education to be successful, which is not true at all ; some of the most famous people are drop outs .

Personally i think children should be asked what they would like to learn about, what drives them ; i have actually come up with a social experiment that involves a lot of very serious questions - its not finished and im trying to come up with 100 questions .. im only sitting at 42 ; they are supposed to be ranked from easy to hard as well, although i have not even gotten that far quite yet .