Public Schools are Relics.

Public school systems are a relic as its educational approach is to treat kids like widgets sent through an assembly line.
This is understandable. It is the result of a wide spread belief of educators in tabula rasa. (This is another way of saying that teachers believe that teaching is a more important part of education than learning, hardly surprising) Also our public education system was mostly formed during the first half of the twentieth century – when mass production was king and seen as the method for quality, quantity and efficiency.
Compare the idea of curriculums to an assembly line. It details what happens in grade 1 which is built on in grade 2 all proceeding at a pre-ordained pace. Teachers give you the desired educational packets to prepare you for the next phase of your education – each step incrementally closer to the final goal.
The problem with this approach is that learning is not something that is done to you; it is something that you do. Now, this point can be muddled so I want to make a clarification. There are different types of learning, some require memorization and repetition – like learning the times tables or vocabulary words of a new language. Others require you to think and reason (using rules) -- like algebra or making sentences in that new language.
The first type may be achievable in an education assembly system. The second type of learning clearly cannot be and will lead to boredom and incomprehension for the student and failure for the system as a whole. Since the first type of education is valueless without the second, the underlying organizational assumptions about education need to change.
I’m not going to invent an entire system of education here from scratch but here is something interesting that I found on the subject:

http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kchi9804.htm