Not to mention imagination and creativity. I'm not completely aware of the situation in U.S. schools, but here (Greece) it's utterly terrible, even in private schools/colleges.
But this essentially goes to show that education and culture (or lack thereof) can have an avalanche effect on society, yet we don't pay as much attention to it as we should (see the planned 25% budget cuts on education in the UK, and elsewhere).
Counter-opinion: Good! Public education is all about obedience and stifles creativity, teaches children that they should follow orders rather than set their own objectives, passes off clearly incorrect propaganda as history, and neglects important life skills like personal finance and goal-setting in favor of learning archaic and useless facts. A main function of public education is the role of baby-sitting and instilling obedience and loyalty to the current government. Cutting this system returns the responsibility of educating children to the people who care the most and have the least conflicting interests with the children - their parents.
[1] I apologize in advance for paraphrasing. "Propaganda is passing as history" would be true if the winner didn't always write the history books. The important factor here is critical thinking: if a kid is given the chance to develop it instead of being spoon-fed whatever is passing off as fact, then (s)he could tell subjective from objective, and could relate to "the other side" when dealing with historic facts.
The problem is, public education chokes out private education the same way that public roads often choke out railroads and water transport. It's hard to compete with free, but it's possible by offering better quality. But it's near impossible to compete with already-been-forced-to-pay-for-it; it means any parent who wants to privately educate their kids needs to pay twice - first through property and income taxes, and second through private tuition.
I know more about the American system than the UK one, and I'll tell you - I'm pretty sure if the U.S. announced today that they were going to scrap the entire public education system at the end of 2010 with no transition at all, there'd be a better system in place by 2011. It's that bad.
The most frequent counter-argument I hear is that the poor couldn't afford it, but the poor are the ones getting the worst out of the current cookie-cutter-centralized-managed system. There's been lots of experimental design in charter schools and custom tailored programs that work, but it's impossible to make ground in a politicized arena. I say scrap it all and let the citizens come up with something better - it made sense to have central education for a while after the Industrial Revolution got underway, but the system is outdated now. I'd be comfortable seeing government spending on education close to 0%: give tax credits for education spending and let parents and private organizations sort it out. They'll come up with something better. They'd be very hard pressed to do any worse than it currently is.
As a tool in your arsenal it's great, as the cornerpiece of your education system it's really not. People need to be shown what to do ultimately.
Finally, America is becoming "less creative" based purely on the judgment of two scientists (literally they look at the drawings and say "I give this one a 15/18"). Seems a little melodramatic/farfetched. I'd be the first to believe the hypothesis but what a stupid experiment.
Doing the lab before reading the theory behind it can be an extremely effective approach to build real understanding of the nature of the experiment, and allows students to explore the very same thought process that the originators of the theory followed to transform their experience of reality into a useful conceptual model. If you've reached this point, the value of the textbook is only in learning the conventions of language and notation that are generally used to frame the idea.
But the whole approach requires an instructor who already has both the enthusiasm and the skill ask the right questions and lead students to their own intuitive understanding. If teachers are simply going through the motions and following a process without being fully engaged in the dialogue, the Socratic approach simply won't work.
Unfortunately, most public school teachers probably do not have the qualities that are needed to make it work.