I have a story about student motivation that bears on the problem.
A Jr in my school was taking my course. He loved it and achieved high
gain. Next year he transferred to another school and took physics II.
Well he said that nobody understood it, including the valedictorian.
Then he took physics at U. Houston. He said it was dreadful. Was he
a good candidate for a career in science? He worked hard, but because
of the poor teaching, we will never know.
My course does involve having students do some moderately hard
problems, as well as demonstrating some basic conceptual
understanding. It is based on research, and has some studio style
features. The better students tend to have their motivation go up.
The ones who are poor in math do have trouble, but if they work hard
I have seen good gain on the FMCE.
But the top 1% will survive and even prosper. Today on the Engines of
our Ingenuity (NPR), John Leonhardt told the story of Robert Millican
who had dreadful courses in physics in both HS and college. He ended
up going into physics because the jobs came open, even though he
preferred the humanities. In the end he prospered and put some of the
final bricks into the budding quantum theory.
So here we have examples of how the top people can prosper, but the
dreadful physics and science teaching at so many schools kills budding
scientists and engineers. It also kills the general public's
appreciation of science and the scientific attitudes.