An interesting system

In U.S. History, we're talking about the Second Industrial Revolution. Since Germany was one of the leaders, we talked about Germany a bit. My mom's side of the family is almost entirely German, so of course I was interested. Anyways, apparently they at least used to have a school system in which you had to keep up grades to continue schooling. That would be nice. If our country was like that now, the people who don't care could drop out and get a simple but necessary job, and us nerds and geeks could grow up to be scientists and get more suitable classes. The teachers could enjoy teaching kids who want to learn, and not have to try to get those who lag far behind keeping up. I mean, I learn kinda slowly, but compared to the majority of the eighth graders at my school, I learn as fast as lightning strikes. Well okay, that's an exaggeration, but you see my point. I'm a nerd/geek in a town where it is not strange at all for classmates to get held back, or barely pass. In this small town, dunces make up about 90% of the school-age population, by my estimate. At my school, there are two groups of popular people that usually ignore each other: the smart kids with somewhat good personalities and the idiots who need a reality check, badly. Most of the smart people are in the smart-popular group and except for one or two of them, don't usually have much to do with me. I feel like an outsider around them, unless it's one of the ones that talk to me sometimes. The other smart people are mostly friends of mine, or at least friendly aquaintences. The other non-popular smart people are some of the many people I don't really know. Also, to make it more complicated, I should add something: there are a few people at my school who know like everyone who isn't popular but are good people, and I am friends with one of them. Let me tell you, they're good at spreading chain email!