If our system was so bad, why is it that each year our physicists, chemists, economists, writers, and medical researchers keep winning Nobel Prizes?

I asked what about the fact that our students do poorly on tests compared to, among others, Chinese students.
His answer was that while the Chinese may do better in tests at age eighteen, no one ever tests them again at twenty-three. By that age, those students have been burnt out preparing for tests, while American kids are first coming into their period of creativity. And after all, what's an education for? Certainly, beyond learning for learning's sake, it's to attain a higher quality of life. Indeed, when we asked some students in China what they thought about that, they readily admitted that the Chinese system allowed precious little room for creativity.