Maybe I just had some substandard science curriculum.  We got pretty much the 10000, or 100000 foot view of most topics.<p>I think the bigger problem is that US education is so overwhelmingly aligned with teaching to what is on the SAT.  There are a hundred basic life skills that are scandalously neglected in favor of pushing everybody up to calculus (ignoring a lot of the geometry and trig that is useful to know if you end up working in trades) and finely tuning our abilities to churn out five paragraph SAT essays.  Shop and Home-ec classes have  been slashed.  Everybody should be able to bake a cake, hem a pair of pants, balance a checkbook, change their oil, replace a lawn-mower belt, understand a loan agreement or lease, hang a shelf, etc.