Feynman's complaints will be familiar to anyone teaching university in the United States. Obviously Feynman makes a distinction between the science education that he knew and the travesty that he saw in Brazil, but today's education in the US is exactly like what he complained about. What happened, and when?

The Russian tradition of "math circles" (https://www.msri.org/people/staff/levy/files/MCL/Zvonkin.pdf) is altogether more productive than US-style kindergarden (no resemblance to the German original) where the 3-year olds sit in rows and have the ABC beaten into them. Of course the Russian approach relies on individual attention and problems, and class sizes are smaller.