Schools are for indoctrination. The bells chime every hour and everybody goes to their next destination, like a pavlovian response. You get an A if you tell the teacher what they want to hear, which is mostly a rephrased excerpt from the textbook + some liberal ideology thrown in. "Smart" is just who can most creatively sell the party line, which you're told is the ticket to college and the good life. Then you get to college and it's exactly the same, because they've been dumbed down for so long they don't even know how to handle anything more advanced than high school level material anyways.