I loved Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman! But to be fair, it was written nearly 30 years ago. I would hope things have gotten better since then.

Not really, at least, not consistently.

"Thus, it must be possible for some people to work their way through the system, bad as it is."

It is possible.

When my young brother asked me about how electrical generators worked (which is, by itself, an unusual question), I had an idea. I hooked up a DC motor to a LED and started cranking it, and he could see the LED lighting up, however faintly. Only then I tried to explain roughly how it worked - that little demonstration kept him interested. And he could explain it later, on his own words.

He didn't grow up to be a scientist, but he thinks like one. I like to think that those little 'scientific' experiments of our youth had something to do with it.

Wow, I had never read this piece before, but it exactly describes the croatian school system. Kids & students just memorising information. Even the teachers don't explain what something means, because they also went through school memorising stuff.

Not really, no