And furthermore, there is a wide-spread belief that any issue in science can be brought down to any level, including highschool and below. Which in fact is not true. And worse, by insisting that it is true, kids are taught things that are incorrect. And even worse, those who teach the kids such incorrect things don't know themselves that what they teachis incorrect, nor do they want to know.
Kids can be taught a lot more than they are now, but you have to avoid dumbing thing down. What is wrong in today's educational system is that children aren't taught mathematics at all.
You ask a 17 year old student why -1 times -1 equals 1 and you won't get the correct answer. Is it then too complicated to teach this to students? Obviously not. Many 17 year olds write complicated computer programs which involves a lot more logical reasoning than the proofs of most maths theorems that students learn at university.
Prof. 't Hooft has started an initiative to teach children the basics of modern physics. Instead of dumbing down the physics you dumb down the mathematics a bit (instead of avoiding it altogether). A lot can be achieved this way.
If you compare science education with language education then you can see the point of this. Foreign language teachers don't wait with teaching literature until students have mastered grammar, spelling etc. perfectly.
't Hooft's concern is that student in high school waste a lot of time solving irrelevant artificial problems instead of learning the real stuff. This gives students the wrong impression of what physics is all about. Today, when students go to university they start at the beginning anyway, because as far as the Profs are concerned, they know nothing.
