I'm an older GenX and can state that my high school chem teacher was more about checking how we kept our lab notebooks (neat handwriting, correct spelling and notation, no doodles) than about doing any cool practicums. I got a C minus.

I did try making the tear gas recipe from Anarchists Cookbook in the crawlspace under a friend's house. Gas of some sort escaped from a stoppered flask midway through the process - I don't know if it was anything close to actual teargas, but the stench was memorable! We rolled out from under the house gagging and laughing, very happy his mom wasn't home.

We utterly failed in our subsequent attempt to make thermite. In retrospect, maybe that C minus was generous.

I'm very early (old) millennial. One of my high school chemistry classes stands out as a favorite course of all high school. The teacher was good (likable, engaging, smart) but also did open book tests that had some new never-before-seen problem.

Many people, even those that were "top students" in other STEM classes, complained about how hard his tests were. As someone terrible at memorizing, I not only enjoyed the challenge but aced that course, despite not really being that interested in chemistry.

The remainder of high school and a lot of university was just memorization. If you knew the formula you could do great, but I had such a hard time remembering that type of detail. I did ok, but on many occasions I remember wishing more courses were like that Chem class, and it still stands out over 20 years later.

We were still doing that stuff in my generation (80's)

It was not until the 00's that the schools went crazy