This is indeed a serious problem. An interesting startup that is trying to address it is http://www.mathalicious.com/. They give math teachers lesson plans which tie math to things that students care about - 'is Kobe Bryant a better shooter than LeBron James?'. Things like that.
From my own experience, I was pretty bored with Math in high school. Through a series of coincidences I started reading some popular physics books, which led me to study Physics and re-discover Math as an incredible tool.
A pattern i see a lot is that people develop and interest in maths outside what their school was doing. Maybe we need to shift the onus onto individual children and families to foster interest in maths, regardless of how the schools teach it. It doesn't really matter how well you prepare the food if people don't have an appetite.
> You say that parents should take a role in their children's intellectual development? Then what am I paying property taxes for?
Let me ask another question -- do you really want to avoid having to provide an intellectual context for your children's life experience, and assign that responsibility to governments instead? Doesn't that sound dangerous? I shall resist quoting historical examples in which governments became the primary source of ideas and intellectual content for a new generation.
From my own experience, I was pretty bored with Math in high school. Through a series of coincidences I started reading some popular physics books, which led me to study Physics and re-discover Math as an incredible tool.