I've never really studied the formation of the educational system here or in my birth country, England. It's hard to make a true comparison to the US, because I don't know their public school system personally, but I get the impression both Australia and the UK seem to be heading the same way as the US, just a few steps behind. A few years ago my daughter briefly attended high school and one of the changes they made while she was there was to make history (their history) a compulsory subject for much longer, meaning that it restricted student exam choices so that they couldn't study more of the relevant topics for the areas of interest they wanted to further. In other words, they made it harder for public school children to get into high level university courses.

I personally went to a Waldorf school, so I have very little experience in the public/state school system, only what I've heard from others and the little experience from when my daughters attended briefly.

What I can tell you is some of the history of education in the UK before it was taken over by government. The industrial revolution started the first education of the poor, with people like Arkwright, who wanted not just manual labourers in the mills, but workers with enough education to be able to take on the office work and organisation side of manufacturing. So he started teaching the workers' children maths and literature. It was very basic learning, really, just the things they needed to know in order to run the mills without his constant supervision. It benefited both him and the workers as he could then go on to build other mills employing more of the poor and creating the new class system incorporating the middle classes.

I know many teachers here in Australia want to teach children how to learn for themselves, but they're very restricted by government curriculum.