I think there's a problem with the word education - college provides you a qualification - not an education. In my youth, that was quite well known. You went to university to get a qualification. You read and traveled in order to get an education.

That said, most people are ignorant. If they weren't, we wouldn't have the systems we have in place. We wouldn't have people saying that vaccines are giving people covid. We wouldn't have conspiracy theories. etc.

When our species is facing extinction and millions (if not billions) of people are going to die as a result of natural disasters over the next 10 years, I don't think I have the time to sit and listen to someone explain to me that the earth is flat and figure out why he thinks that.

As for book statement that books 'arent' that great,' where do you think we save all our knowledge. There isn't a single you or anyone else knows that wasn't written in a book somewhere. Without the knowledge saved and passed down in books, we wouldn't have a modern society.