School is boring. The skill to learn is how to deal with that and still survive. At such a young age you're learning the rules which is why it's hard to engage students. A classic example, using algebra to balance a checkbook, would bore students more. They don't have the ability to do any interesting geometry, no knowledge of physics (that's usually high school), etc. Chemistry is typically not taught before the middle of high school, etc. Keeping high school students engaged, from what I understand, is a different art entirely.

The only class that might be able to be made more interesting is English. The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby are both snoozefests. But for other subjects the idea of "creating engagement" is more difficult. People seem to think children possess the foresight they do even though they are adults. In middle school, most of the time you can just say "this will get better in a few years if you do well here". Children lack a sense of delayed gratification. Hence the popularity of PE as a subject (aside from the health benefits) or music classes relative to other classes. Funny enough, the modern adult (still a child) also tends to lack this ability. There's nothing wrong with these classes intrinsically. They just provide an "instant" dopamine hit a developing brain is hardwired to understand.

Not everyone can afford to send their kids to a "montessori" school to have some avante garde teaching method keep them "engaged". For the rest of us, learning how to cope with something boring will be an extremely useful life skill the second you enter the real world.