[Taylor]

Many, many times I've heard adults say something along the lines of "if school were this much fun, I'd have paid more attention."
Guess what - school is fun. Look at what students are doing in the classroom. Wicked awesome biology, physics, and chemistry labs. Field trips. Hands-on state-of-the-art technology. Award winning curricula and project-based learning techniques.
Guess what - there's still apathy. After a day or two, it becomes old news. I suppose I'm part of what they call "Generation X" - "the MTV generation" - yet some of the kids I've seen in school have an attention span that makes mine look infinite. There's this one class, every student in America takes it - the whole purpose is for students to play games - and we can't even get some of them to dress for class!
When we say "the system is broken" often people look at the education system as a sole entity. I'd say our culture is broken. It's been said that educating is about lighting fires, not filling buckets. Ignite the passions of the students, and they'll do well. Unfortunately, there are too many forces out there, outside the academic environment that distract and redirect students' passions toward things that are unhealthy.

[grand, widely generalized statement not at all directed toward the OP coming up]

I agree that the American public school system would benefit from some changes. One-size-fits-all rarely does. However, if we make school like video games, then video games will become boring and passe. We can't keep chasing the carrot - we have to gain control of the stick.