How much is because school, because of fear from parents and students in today's environment, are afraid to challenge students with making them think about hard questions? When I was a teen, Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement were underway. I can remember sitting in mixed race classes in public HS and even JHS and being regularly being given assignments like 'defend a position of the Vietman War', or capital punishment, or having an open debate about 'X' and 'Y' have fallen in the water, who do you save - one is black/latino/Hitler/Gandhi etc, etc. defend your positions, then defend your opponent's. My kids are a generation out of school, but I know they were never challenged like that, and I tend to believe education in general can only have become more vapid since. I'm sure there are still teachers who try, they're ones we read about getting fired. How many of them are left?
I have a book on the shelf, something about "the Coddling of the American Mind" - I haven't bothered to read it, already know the story.