Education and the Concept of Failure

I am not the type of person who is going to strive for an A. I like learning, but I don't like that image of coming off as the really pretentious kid in class. There's always one, the "I know everything, get all A's, and brag about it" types. That's great for them. I still learn.

Anyways, that was a disclaimer. What I'm really concerned with is the lack of education our society as a whole is going through. We are suffering from what I like to call stupidity. Our high school standards have ceased to achieve higher learning, and it has caused a "no child left behind" effect on the rest of education. Colleges have started to offer high school classes as an approach to make college fit everyones needs. High schoolers continue to drop out and flood our walmarts and mcdonalds with employees.

What i'm getting at is this. I respect people that go to get higher learning, whether it be trade school, college, or other options. But there are two concepts that i'm struggling with:

1. Why do people who really have no desire to learn in college slow down the pace for the rest of us?

2. Why do teachers in college tend to only care about certain topics, and make people trying to learn suffer in their other classes that they don't care about?

Let's discuss.