Current paradigm tries to educate kids about topics they do not care about, package those kids and all the learnings up, and then send them off into the world.
But the real thing we want is for people to be curious, and to be problem solvers, and learning things you don't yet care about is a surefire way to ensure that people will not retain that information.
Example: I wanted to get better at understanding how payments are calculated for an app I was building. I had taken math courses, but I cannot tell you any functions because when I was learning them I didn't see any application for them. So they went in my brain temporarily, and then out. When I wanted to learn to solve a specific problem I consumed many videos about how these payments are calculated, I truly learned the subject matter, and created the app with that functionality.
We should give kids a foundation of knowledge, but then educate them as the needs arise for a specific thing they are trying to accomplish. We should shorten formal schooling and enable kids to jump into topics that interest them.
I have four kids. Right now one is creating an Etsy shop. Another is trying to start a bicycle repair shop. They are learning a lot of topics as they investigate these things, and they are incredibly motivated in these pursuits. But they hate school.