It wasn't until after my college years that I realized how much better-prepared for a scientific education I could have been. Many of my classmates came from the Northeast, especially the NYC area, and had received exposure to more advanced material at the high school level than I ever could have gotten in the South, despite being in a select group of math students who got an "enriched" curriculum, and despite living in the county with either the best or second-best school system in the state. I didn't realize at the time that, despite having always been an excellent student who was never forced to work hard at all to master the material, I was really at a disadvantage that I should have taken decisive action to correct.
Not to say that our teachers didn't try. It was just that I saw such a small portion of what real science, and real math, was like, that I never knew just how high it was possible to set my sights, and never worked all that hard to achieve the end goal -- it seemed like there wasn't that much more to learn, and it was all going to be easy. I've tried to catch up later in life, but of course it's so much easier to learn when you're younger, and especially when you have no other responsibilities to distract you from your own education.
For a great many professions -- or more accurately ways to earn a living -- such a rich education is not necessary. But our country really doesn't have any systematic way to find and nourish young talent in the sciences, particularly the abstract sciences, despite all the emphasis on "STEM" which politicians all claim to favor (at the expense of other subjects, but that's another story). If we could find and nourish potential scientists as effectively as we do potential professional athletes, think what a country we would have.
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