Listening to the teacher is the willingness i’m speaking about, and taking it in require effort. That effort can technically be lessen by intelligence.

However having a bad education system will drive intelligent people to drop it and be unwilling to learn in the first place. I guess that’s really what you meant.

I didn’t go to school in the US so I can’t say if they are that terrible. Where I live they were always some teachers to raise the bar.

That said if the richest didn’t finish school, those who haven’t finished school aren’t all rich. Plenty of them dropped for the wrong reasons.

Furthermore getting rich isn’t always the goal, some smart people are passionate about subject that doesn’t pay as well but does require extensive study. For instance sciences are such fields.

Unfortunately deciding if school is or isn’t for you isn’t much a matter of intelligence rather than wisdom.