Reading polemical religious or political apologetic works (and not understanding that's what they are) doesn't help; e.g. most of the Bible/Koran or Ravi Zacharias or Karl Marx. Those things shut down critical thinking like nobody's business!

You can't fight ignorance

Pretty soon I'd say it'll be safe to just point at any number of nations kicking our economic butt...

I suspect that part of the problem is how science is taught in school. Here in the UK, science tends to be about facts and what has been discovered by scientists through the years. It is often far removed from students' daily experiences and relates to little they see in real life.

Perhaps if more attention was paid to the scientific method, teaching students how to verify things by observation, testing and predicting and relating this to stuff in their everyday life, science may become more accessible and better understood.

If children were better educated as to how scientists make discoveries and how their methods and observations are tested, criticised and evaluated by their peers, they may better appreciate how the 'facts' have been arrived at, even if they don't understand how this may affect them directly.

Admittedly, that's a pretty simplistic view, but many of the pupils I work with have no interest in what makes things tick, they just want them to tick.

Make a compulsory standard graded test, that all children must pass to progress to high school or collage.

start inn kindergarten

Of course education is important. But the culture of parents needs some change. Many parents do not help educate their children, never help with kids homework or much worse.