Education is not a means to an end

With the perceived complexity of modern life, it is tempting for people who want a 'professional' career to see their lives in a very linear fashion, of primary school, get good grades, go to a good secondary school, get good grades, go to a good university, get good grades, get a good job and earn good money, and then the same all over again for their children. Hence now when students fail to get the requisite good grades, child and parent alike throw their toys out the pram. Remarks, resits and when these avenues are not available, second degrees or further degrees.
But education was never simply intended to just be a means to an end. Of course throughout the history of man education has been a way to pass on lifeskills that can bring home the bacon, but it also has been the case that ever since civilisation got to a point that not everyone had to struggle to survive that education soon became a way of simply cultivating the mind, of putting the enormous brain power that we have evolved to some constructive use. Education for the purposes of recreation was not purely didactic, teaching was through means of debate where the teacher could enhance their own understanding through discourse with their students.
Now we live in materially comfortable age yet schoolchildren and university students still too often complain of boredom, of being not intellectually challenged despite the fact that the modern person spends more time in education than ever before. This is the biggest, and most tragic failure of the modern state. People are either driven to reject school, play truant and leave school with no qualifications having cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands, or are forced through the system by parents and teachers, coming out of the whole thing violated and resentful.
Making education more two-way, interesting and stimulating is not just an afterthought to the number one goal in modernity of economic progress, it is vital to human evolution and the advancement of the species.