I think there is another force at play here - the assumption that there is a platonic ideal good education system that works at every scale of population.

Attempting to scale something that large forces people into boxes that fit inside the framework - one must necessarily ignore little detailed differences between humans.

But from the perspective of those individual humans, ignoring those little details doesn't really work. Those things are important, and tend to ping our egos, so we react accordingly, and are eager for opportunities to give voice to this frustration.