On the Anti-Conceptual Education System in America

I've been trying to put a label on exactly what I believed to be the primary factor in the decline of America's education system for quite a while, and it was only tonight that the lightbulb turned on. I suppose I ought to pose an example first and give readers an opportunity to analyze it's implications.

This is a paraphrased excerpt from an essay prompt I saw being assigned to underclassmen today:

"...boys are falling behind women in math and college graduation rates. Should government funds be given to schools to help their boys improve?"

Students are given all sorts of scientific facts, such as statistics about boys and girls, how government aid in the past "helped" women gained an edge, etc.

I feel I'm misrepresenting that question slightly, but I think my point can still be made. Students are asked to take an isolated, out of context idea and accept it as a concrete. The issue of government handouts is not being related to any larger issue, such as the nature of government and its proper function. How can the essay prompt be answered intelligently if it's not taken in the wider context of the proper function of government? This is brainwashing in its most evil form. It gives students a group of random facts and statistics, and confines them to those numbers for their argument, ignoring, in my opinion, purposefully, essential questions, such as whether or not government should even be involved in education at all.

Students are not asked to think in concepts or principles, but in isolated events that are completely cut off from the whole. This goes against our very nature though, as humans are conceptual beings; our survival depends on it. A proper education is one that doesn't defy our nature, and seeks to teach students to think in terms of wider concepts.

Examples

The American Revolution - at it's core, it's an issue of individual rights, but we are rarely taught this in school. Instead we're given isolated facts such as taxes, property control, quartering, trade restrictions, etc, and asked to make sense out of the mess.

Essay prompt on government aid to boys - it's essentially one of the role of government, but the question removes the students ability to think in those terms by limiting them to concrete bound statistics.

I don't have more time to write tonight but I hope I made my point.