Because the US public school system was based on the Prussian model. In essence, Rockefeller wanted good little obedient soldiers and factory workers that would give deference to authority. That's part of the reason why western education has so much overwhelming classwork, homework, and rote memorization in it because it's less about giving people information they're expected to maintain and more about breaking people down, exhausting them, and getting them mentally to a point to want to take shortcuts in thinking.

I mean when everyone is constantly mentally exhausted all the time... are you really going to pick up something and really study it unless you're super passionate about it? Probably not, and even if you're going to push through? It's much easier to just take an expert's word for it. And to quash all those pesky nerds who do have passion to pick something up, really understand it, even understand it better than the shill experts? Well shit, what if we used our human behavior engineers and devise a way to induce dopamine dysregulation on a mass scale? Fuck, can't even play video games half the time. Much easier to just catch a stream..