Lack of "soft skills" is the problem. We are taught or force fed knowledge, but not taught how to be well adjusted people.
You were lucky, for some reason you came to understand the value of personal development and self education. This is something that needs to be taught to everyone. In the world.
But I think its worth bringing up again as it is seemingly at the root of all the issues surfaced by the Trump presidency, which is the main driver of this new RFS
Yes this is a problem that certainly deserves attention.
But the education issues also apply to the other five in six children who do have food security. The education problem is one that affects anyone who does not have access to the best private schools.
When I say fix education, I don't mean teach people programming or whatever skills or knowledge that might give them a marginal leg up. Those things are becoming increasingly less valuable.
I mean teach people how to be well adjusted people, teach them soft skills of empathy and understanding others, teach them why and how to continuously improve themselves, teach them how to identify areas where they can contribute to society without waiting for a teacher or boss to tell them exactly what to do.
Without these abilities, more and more will fall into the poverty trap as the need for worker bees diminishes.
The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education.
1) The current methods are highly ineffective for teaching
By getting more effective at teaching children, and helping them to self educate, we get better informed citizens who can interpret news more accurately and effectively participate in democracy.
2) The current goals for education do not align with current & future needs
Our current system is designed to produce factory workers for the industrial economy, which was adapted to produce knowledge workers for the information economy. But we are moving towards full automation of most of those jobs.
We will need to prepare people to be adaptable in a fast changing automated world: more entrepreneurial type skills are needed.
Note that a16z typically invests starting at Series A, post-traction.
You might consider applying to MetaCartel.org - a DAO which gives small grants to people building web3 application.