What if the solution to ignorance isn't found in formal education?

You often see people interpret any ignorance they observe as a failure in education. "They should teach this in school," they say, "they should make it a required course."

I wonder if this might be doing us all a disservice?

As I've blogged about before, I didn't learn everything I needed to know about anything in high school, but rather got a starting point for learning things myself as the need arises. I'm wondering if, by treating ignorance as a failure of education, we're collectively absolving ourselves of our own responsibility to keep learning? If people don't know what prorogation means, even if they should have learned it in school and didn't, their job now as adults and functional members of society is to recognize that they should know what it means, and find out what it means. Not having learned it in school isn't nearly as bad as sitting there going "Waah, I don't know what prorogation means because I never learned it in school!" instead of spending 30 seconds googling.

I also wonder if, by deeming it a job for formal education, we're inadvertently giving it a mystique, framing it as something that needs to be taught instead of something that you can figure out yourself. And I'm worried that this will, in turn, alienate people who aren't so very into formal education. I read in Big Sort (and have observed hints in real life) that sometimes people who have not gone through formal education tend to perceive formal education as Other (and sometimes as a bit suspicious). If we view ignorance as a problem to be solved with formal education, would we be marking it as Other for people who don't have formal education, giving the tacit impression that understanding these things isn't for them, and/or that learning them is only for people who have formal education.

I'm not opposed to adapting our formal education system to meet our ever-evolving needs, but I am worried about giving the impression that formal education is the only way out of ignorance, rather than that people should be bringing themselves out of their own ignorance.