Is our education failing us?

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Well, the evidence that the Earth is millions or billions of years old can't avoid undermining those religious authorities who taught that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. And there's no shortage of religious authorities who use denial of the old-Earth theory as a means of undermining the credibility of science:
https://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/ ... t-page-22/

Fossils are dated, primarily, by making use of the knowledge of the “half-lives” of various elements (e.g., potassium, argon, Carbon 14).

Of course, God is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, and all the rest. He could certainly have created the world 5 billion years ago.

Religious people believe because they have faith in what they believe. It’s impossible to argue scientifically if non-science “goal posts” are used.

Yes.

What AngelRho is saying is totally ass-backward. The age of the earth is NOT brought up for the purposes of "undermining the credibility of the Biblical account of Creation". The Biblical account of creation was thoroughly debunked long ago anyway. Its is the religious Fundamentalists who "bring up" the topic in order to confront science. Not what AR says (the other way around). Its the Fundies who create a whole industry out of science denial - with textbook, movies, museums with plastic figures of Jesus riding saddled dinosaurs, and building theme parks around 'life sized' mock ups of Noah's Ark.

The age of the earth was initially a disagreement among Christians, not fundies and empiricists. It eventually became that, of course, but it started out as a question of what it means to believe the Bible and whether the Bible is literally true, There are those who say if you don't believe the earth is only thousands of years old, you can't be a Christian. Only then and there is the age of the earth even relevant.

The issue you are referring to is that empiricism is what's being taught in school and is agnostic at best by its nature. When you are essentially telling kids God doesn't exist, which is what YEC people are talking about, you are no longer talking about science. You are intruding on religion. I don't agree with YEC, either, but I do understand the point they are trying to make.

YEC people wouldn't make such an issue out of it if there weren't religious implications.

The way I look at it is this: If your faith is so fragile that it hinges on something unknowable like the age of the earth (we have ideas about how old the earth might be, not an exact birthdate) and you get shook up over evidence, you might want to reexamine why you believe the way you do. The last thing I want to call into question is where I'm going in the afterlife, and it's disturbing to think that putting a born-on date on the earth is all it takes to consign me to the flames.

So maybe people like YEC or these nameless, faceless "fundies" you refer to need to stay in their lane. But don't ignore that there are empiricist "fundies" and other anti-theists commenting on religion when they don't know any more what they're talking about than YEC's.

I don't think anybody here has tried to claim that there aren't thickheads on both sides of the debate. Why is it so important to you to establish that?