I submit that the composition of the population that the U.S. has now, compared to what it was in the 18th and early--and I accent "early"--19th century is so different that what you are doing absolutely cannot be done except by a few of the upper middle class. The lower-middle class, lower class, and the very poor don't offer much in the way of raw material, knowledge, and interest in doing what you did. It does have to be as it is.
I believe that the authors of "The Bell Curve" had it right: intelligence is largely a function of heredity. Otherwise, you could stop someone at random off the street corner and make him or her a nuclear physicist.
I do heartily congratulate you for what and your spouse have done but--and this strikes me as extremely sad--only a tiny, tiny percentage of the American population can do what you did.
Allow me to offer this: When I went to Harvey Mudd College to study engineering, I had the great fortune to study a semester of directed reading under Dr. William Allen. This was a conservative's conservative. He could read and translate Thucydides on the fly, and the same with Montesquieu. He is a scholar of the letters of George Washington, Oxford educated... coming from a poor black family in Florida.
I don't buy it. Not a bit of it. Yes, some abilities are innate, but that matters so little compared to culture and upbringing (including in utero) that to throw up your hands with this kind of cultural chauvinism, besides being defeatist, is counterproductive. Not being dedicated to solutions, it blinds you to opportunity with solutions like this or this.
Attempt either one and the system would be transformed in but a few years.