This is not to say that education, especially for boys and young men couldn't be made considerably better.
Like when the Conquistadors "civilized" mexico Or when the Portuguese and French "civilized" West Africa.
Once you really dig deep into history you can see humans have been wiping off other nations and civilizations left and right. Assyrians, babylonians - all gone. One could make an assumption genocide and warfare are almost instinctive to us.
What's left are few rocks standing, if even that, all ruined by our own hubris and violent nature.
Maybe just maybe “the system” (as you called it) is just a seemingly more civilized way of doing what was done before: surviving.
No matter, without organized mechanized agriculture and the nitrogen fixation process and other technology of the present, most of us would be dead and not able to ponder the question.